Splintering
by Lynse
Summary: Dr. Sam Beckett has been leaping about in time for years, but when he leaps into the Doctor, he's reminded of just how fragile time really is—-and how sometimes, a small change can have horrifying effects. Crossover with Doctor Who, sequel to Patchwork.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: As this is a sequel to my story _Patchwork_, I am assuming that readers are familiar with both universes. While it is possible to read this story without reading _Patchwork_, I do refer to events in it, beginning with the first chapter, and therefore recommend that _Patchwork_ is read anyhow. For Quantum Leap, this is set sometime after _The Leap between the States_ and before _Mirror Image_. For Doctor Who, this is set after _Planet of the Dead_ and relatively close to _The Waters of Mars _or immediately after _Blink_ and before _Utopia_, depending on which Doctor you are following at any given moment.

_Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and I make no money from this work of fiction!_

* * *

Right, things were going well so far, all things considered. And if the Doctor had stopped, he must have found something. Martha Jones jogged up to him, trying to catch her breath, grinning at him. "Did you find them?" she asked, referring to the creatures they'd been chasing.

He just stared at her. It wasn't his don't-talk-right-now-I'm-concentrating stare, it wasn't his listening-to-things-she-couldn't-hear stare, it wasn't his coming-up-with-a-plan-to-foil-the-enemy stare, it wasn't his struck-by-past-memories stare, or even any of the others, it was just…. Well, if she was perfectly honest, he looked a bit disoriented.

"Doctor?"

Nothing.

Well, they'd lost those creatures, anyhow. It hadn't been five minutes, and she'd already forgotten the name of them. It would help if the name was in English, but as it was, it was hardly pronounceable. That was admittedly a bit of an exaggeration, though it sounded to her like the first half of the word was swallowed and the other half choked out, but the point still stood; the name wasn't memorable enough, especially when she couldn't repeat it in her head to remind herself what exactly it was.

It had helped a bit that the Doctor had described the creatures in question, but when she tried drawing comparisons, he'd frowned at her. Still, as much as the Doctor insisted they _weren't_ chasing after leprechauns or brownies or what have you, from what she understood, they were essentially the same. So that was how she planned to think of them, and so long as she didn't tell him that, she'd be none the worse for the wear.

"Doctor," she started again, "are you all right?" He didn't answer her, at least not immediately as she had expected. She could see him looking around, trying to take everything in. He looked…. Well, he looked amazed, which wasn't new, except that they weren't anywhere _particularly_ amazing, not if she compared it to what she'd seen before. They were back on Earth, after all. Even if they were smack dab in the middle of nowhere, right next to some ancient stone lines of some sort.

Okay, maybe it wasn't the middle of nowhere, seeing as they were in a sheep pasture. And, yes, if she stopped to consider the history, maybe these parallel standing stone lines were, as the Doctor would say, brilliant. But she wouldn't have minded if they could have made it a little further away from 1969 London than the Devon countryside.

He swallowed, and his gaze found her eyes again. "Yes, yes, I'm fine," he croaked.

"You don't look fine." She frowned at him. "Did something happen or something that I should know about?"

She was watching him every second, and now she saw something she had never thought she'd see. The Doctor was nervous, and it wasn't just a farce. "What do you mean?" he asked guardedly.

Oh, this was good. She wanted to relish it, but she was fearful herself now. As amusing as it was to see that particular expression on the Doctor's face, when he was wholly himself and not simply John Smith, something had to be wrong. "Oh, I don't know," she replied, trying to keep her tone relaxed, nonchalant. "Maybe time went a bit wibbly-wobbly on you?"

He should have grinned at that. She was using his words, after all. But he didn't. He just stared at her. And blinked. "We should be going," he said suddenly. Evasion. So maybe he was all right, after all. Well, as all right as a Time Lord could be when something that most certainly was not all right was happening.

He didn't start leading her somewhere, though. "If you say so," she agreed, "but I hope you can track them, because we'll have lost them by now."

The panicked look returned to his face. "You don't think you want to—?"

He left it hanging, and she wasn't sure what to say. Not this time. "Oh, um, well…. No, no, it's okay, we don't have to."

Now he looked confused. But only for a second. "But if we're supposed to—"

"Oh! You were asking if I wanted to—? Doctor, if you're not well, we shouldn't…. You said they don't really do any _harm_, anyway. Right? They just sort of move things around for a bit of fun? You know, keys and things, and people find them later?" His composure was slipping; he was starting to look panicked again. "We can deal with them after we sort this."

She had a feeling that she hadn't quite answered his question, and now she wasn't really sure what it was meant to have been, but the Doctor seemed to accept what she said. He nodded to her. "Lead on."

"You're kidding, right?" she asked. "I was following you. I'm not sure where we are."

"Oh, boy," the Doctor muttered, eyes looking heavenward.

"What was that?" she asked, not quite certain she'd heard right.

"We'll just head back the way we came," the Doctor reasoned, pretending not to hear her. "Find our way from there."

"But you said…." Martha shook her head. Something was off; that was clear enough. The Doctor could always find the way back to the TARDIS. Admittedly, she was certain he'd gotten it wrong a few times and just led her around a couple extra turns to disguise that, but she'd never seen him outright admit that he was lost, and he'd as good as done that. "Never mind." She'd just keep an eye on him and make sure that he hadn't come down with something.

At the very least, she could figure out why he was acting funny. He was _walking_ differently, for goodness' sakes. He wasn't just strolling along at a leisurely place or running just slowly enough to allow her to keep up, and he didn't have his hands in his pockets, and he wasn't holding his sonic screwdriver up in front of him to give them some sort of direction….

One thing at a time. It was Earth, after all. Not some weird alien planet. That made the chances of something coming down to somehow suddenly possess the Doctor significantly slimmer. Not impossible, but definitely slimmer.

"There's a road up ahead," he called out after a few minutes. "We can follow it."

Normally, that would be excellent, especially considering what she'd just stepped in because she had been too busy watching him to figure out what was wrong to watch where she was going. But she was fairly sure they'd never crossed a road. "Maybe it's the other way," she offered, catching up to him. "I don't remember any road. Just a lot of hills and rocks."

"We can get directions," the Doctor pointed out. "Someone can tell us where to go."

That made no sense. "But we parked in the middle of nowhere. And unless you can disable that thing from here, no one's even going to be able to tell."

Now _he_ was looking at _her_ as if she'd lost it. "What thing?" he asked. And it wasn't indignant, it was…curious.

"The…. I don't know, the…the thing. The same thing you did with the watch." Martha shrugged. "You can't expect me to remember _everything_ you say." But he was still looking at her, and she sighed. "The perception thing. Er…filter, that's it." The blank look remained. "Did you hit your head or something?" she asked. "I mean, I didn't see you fall, but…."

"Maybe," he admitted, reaching up to rub one side as if just realizing that it hurt.

"Let me look, then," she insisted. He jerked back when she came towards him, and she frowned at him. "Come on, you. You're not invincible. I've heard that you can fall down stairs when you're preoccupied." As John Smith, her mind added. As the Doctor, he could withstand temperatures that would….

That didn't mean anything. Just because she hadn't _seen _him get sick, didn't mean he couldn't. "Why are you so jumpy?" she asked. "Is there something you aren't telling me?" That must be it. "Doctor, I thought you trusted me. Haven't I proven that?"

"Of course I trust you," he said, smiling at her.

"Then stop being a baby and let me look at you."

He still looked wary, but he relented and went through the examination without further protest. But she couldn't find a thing wrong with him. And when she admitted it, he smiled at her again. "See?" he said. "Perfectly fine."

"Not quite," she scolded. "Because you still didn't know what I was talking about."

"You need to learn to describe things better," he rationalized. "That's all."

It wasn't, but Martha let it drop. She just followed the Doctor to the road, hoping that he'd let her in on what was bothering him. It had to be important if it had him acting like this, and she wasn't about to let him get away without telling her. Because he wasn't acting like himself, not really. And that worried her.

The last time he hadn't been himself, he'd fallen in love with someone else. And she'd had to watch it, and then she'd had to tear them apart, and the entire incident had left her heart in pieces. The Doctor had never said how much he remembered of that, and she knew enough not to ask. But this time, they weren't being chased by some alien Family who wanted to suck his life out of him, and they didn't have to hide. But something had caused him to change, just a bit, and it was the not-knowing that made her so fearful.

* * *

The minute the Waiting Room was occupied, an alarm had sounded. Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci was used to alarms, and usually he knew how to respond. But _no one_ at Project Quantum Leap knew what that particular alarm was for, let alone where it was or how to turn it off—Ziggy included, which was particularly disturbing to Al. The parallel-hybrid computer wasn't one to let them down, and she had a complete schematic of the Project's buildings. Nothing changed without her knowing about it.

Until, it seemed, now.

"Gooshie!" Al hollered, storming into the main control room. "What's going on?" He'd asked before, and he hoped that now he might be able to get an answer.

But Gooshie was shaking his head. "I don't know, Admiral. Ziggy's running scans, but we can't pinpoint the source of the alarm."

Al sighed. Gooshie was an expert with computer systems, but even he couldn't work a miracle when Ziggy herself was incapable of something. The thought that Ziggy was incapable of anything didn't bode well for his nerves, but if Gooshie hadn't even been able to find anything preventing her systems from working, there wasn't any other option.

Al started muttering to himself, wishing he had a cigar. "Any words from Beeks about the guy in the Waiting Room?"

"Negative, Admiral," Gooshie replied. "Dr. Eleese and—"

"Yeah, Donna and Tina are still checking the building the old fashioned way, I know," Al interrupted, waving Gooshie off. "I'm going to talk to this guy, okay? If Beeks thinks he's calm enough. If he tells us anything, it might help us find Sam."

Gooshie nodded, but Al could tell that he was already distracted, typing frantically away at one of Ziggy's terminals. Sighing, Al headed to the Waiting Room. He met Beeks outside. "How is he?" he asked, jerking his head towards the door.

"He seems stable, Admiral," Dr. Verbeena Beeks replied. "No breakdowns and no threats."

"That's saying something, considering," Al agreed. With Beeks's approval, he went inside. The leapee didn't pay him any mind at first, still staring at his reflection in the table's mirrored surface.

Al cleared his throat, and the man looked up. He offered a wary sort of grin which looked out of place on Dr. Samuel Beckett's face. Sam's smiles reached his eyes. This man's did not. That, or it wasn't a true smile.

"Hello," the man greeted cheerfully. "Think you can tell me where I am and how I came to be here?"

"You're in the Waiting Room," Al answered.

"Well, I can see that. Been doing a lot of waiting," the man replied in the same cheerful tone. "Though I expect that's because you've been a bit busy."

"Don't concern yourself about it," Al said, knowing the man was referring to the alarm. "We've got everything under control."

"Oh, I doubt that," the man answered. "Because that sounds suspiciously like a reworked Ilantrian Four frequency detector when the main system's been shorted out and the backup's been a bit—" He stopped, seeing Al staring at him. "What, didn't you know that?"

"Who _are_ you?" Al demanded, having a sinking feeling that he knew the answer. He stopped focussing on Sam's image—a habit he'd acquired when initially meeting the leapees so as not to judge them immediately; he'd started after the vampire fiasco, since Sam had been right after all—and saw the leapee for who he really was.

"Well, it's a bit rude of you to demand _my_ name when you haven't given me _yours_," the man retorted. But then he grinned, and this time it did reach his eyes. "I'm the Doctor. And you are?"

Al opened his mouth and closed it again. "Al," he answered finally, thinking that maybe he ought to hold off calling on Gooshie for the moment. The mMan was busy, after all.

"Good to meet you, Al. Now," the Doctor pulled himself up on the table to sit, glancing down at his reflection as he did so, "I don't seem to recall dying, and I seem to be the same anyhow—teeth and all that didn't change this time around, which would make sense if I haven't—so I have a feeling that you know a lot better than I do why I—" He stopped, looked thoughtful for about fifteen seconds, and then licked his hand.

Al stared at him. The man did it again.

The man seemed to be savouring the taste for a moment before he focussed his gaze on Al again. "You know, I am rather impressed. When is this, 2000?" He sniffed, frowned, and shook his head. "Nah, can't be, not yet. No sign that the laws of physics have been thrown out the window and that time had to rework itself. Not recently, at any rate. Still. If you lot came up with something that'll nick the Vortex without completely destroying the travellers that you send through your primitive little transmat experiment, cloaking them for better integration, then I must congratulate you on your brilliance. Providing you figured this out yourselves. Though from the sounds of that alarm, you might have to convince me of that."

"You are the Doctor," Al stated, the memory of the last time he had met the man—alien, though Al kept forgetting that—still all too vivid in his mindly. "But your mind's been Swiss-cheesed!"

"My mind's what?" the Doctor repeated. He looked offended.

"You've got holes in your memory," Al explained. "Gaps."

"My memory's _fine_, thank you very much," the Doctor retorted. "Only holes are the ones I put there." He didn't explain, and Al knew better than to ask.

"It's not," Al argued. "But that's natural. A side effect."

"My memory's perfectly fine," the Doctor repeated. "I was in 1983 with Martha, tracking a rouge pack of Tryl'c'ark through the Devon countryside when you interrupted me."

The last time Al had met the Doctor, the man had been alone. But even with all the Doctor had done to clean out Ziggy's files, he hadn't touched the first bit of evidence that they'd turned up about him and a Martha Jones helping to save a boy's life in 1969. He'd had his reasons, and Al couldn't remember them now, but he did remember one thing about the Doctor.

The man was a time traveller. Al had no doubt about that.

And being a time traveller, it seemed, had consequences.

The Doctor was at Project Quantum Leap a second time, but for him…. For him, it was the first time.

At least, Al thought, trying to be optimistic, they'd be able to find Sam now.

* * *

They did find the TARDIS, eventually. After heading in a different direction. But the Doctor had nearly walked right passed it, intent on something else—or at least that's what he insisted, but Martha wasn't so sure. Wouldn't he tell her _what_ he'd been looking at, or at least insist on going off to investigate it first, if that were the case?

And then he tried opening it without his key. When he couldn't, he made a big show of letting her do it for him. And she would have, really, but something stopped her. "Doctor," she said, turning her back on the TARDIS and pocketing the key again, "maybe we ought to just go for a bit of a walk, yeah?"

He looked at her suspiciously. Martha sighed. She deserved that. "It'll…. We can talk."

"Yes," he agreed finally. "Don't suppose we need anything from in there." He nodded towards the TARDIS.

"No," she said, cursing the awkward conversation. He still wasn't acting right, and he wouldn't admit it, but she was sure she could catch him at it if she tried. Something they'd done must have had repercussions, she figured. Maybe the whole thing with the chameleon arch and John Smith and the Family…. Maybe it couldn't be suppressed as easily as the Doctor insisted.

Because as far as she could tell, John Smith—or some other human personality of the Doctor's—was bleeding through.

She could test that, though. Easily. "And it'd be a bit of a tight fit, if we both went inside," she added, nodding at the TARDIS herself.

He looked at it, studying it. "A bit of one," he agreed. But his tone of voice left Martha wondering if he was joking or not.

She started walking, and he followed. "What were those creatures again? I can't remember."

"Oh, it doesn't matter now," the Doctor replied, hands swinging a bit by his sides as he walked.

"Doctor," she started again, deciding the silence had gone on for too long, "why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" he asked innocently.

"This. This…this entire thing! This act!" Martha stopped and threw up her hands. "I don't understand."

The Doctor looked at her for a moment. Finally he answered, "I'm acting because you are."

_That_ threw her. "What's that supposed to mean? _I'm_ not acting!"

"Sure you are," he replied. "You're concerned about me and trying to hide it, but you're failing miserably."

Okay, maybe she was wrong about bits of John Smith bleeding through. Besides, if that was going to happen, surely it would have happened before now. They'd spent enough time in 1969, after all, and she'd never noticed anything off then. At any rate, the Doctor seemed back to normal now. As normal as was normal for the Doctor.

"All right, I'm sorry, you win," she said, giving up. "But at least tell me why you stopped chasing those brownies earlier."

He gave her a look that she was sure he'd seen from her a thousand times. He had no idea what she was talking about. Scratch being normal, then. "The creatures, I mean. I know they're not brownies, but they sound like it." And she waited, knowing the Doctor would be itching to launch into a lecture about the creatures, telling her the pronunciation of their name _again_, looking exasperated as he did so, and going on to explain the difference between those creatures and _real _brownies, or at least what humans mistakenly called real brownies, and after he'd done all that and more, _then_ he'd answer her question. If he remembered it. Which she figured he would, just not right away. It would take a minute or so. Or perhaps he just waited for her to process everything else first; it was hard to say.

But he didn't lecture her. "I'd thought I'd seen something else," he answered finally. "I was mistaken."

"So you're admitting you were wrong?" Martha clarified. That was rare.

"My eyes were playing tricks on me," he responded, smiling gently at her.

She grinned. "Must be getting old."

"Maybe."

Why was it that every time the Doctor was starting to sound _remotely_ like the Doctor, he went and said something completely _unlike_ the Doctor? He wasn't still pulling her leg, was he? "Doctor," she said, hoping her tone would convey her exasperation with the situation.

"Yes?"

Innocence again. Figures. "I'm serious."

"So am I."

"No, you're not." Martha sighed. "Look, maybe you don't want to tell me _everything_, but…. Doctor, if you trust me, you have to tell me something. I know something's off, and if you just tell me…. I may not be able to help, but…." She trailed off. He was looking a bit thoughtful this time. "I'll give you some time to yourself, yeah? And then you'd better tell me."

"Of course," he replied easily, smiling at her again.

She'd put it out of her mind for now. She wasn't sure she wanted to let him into the TARDIS—just in case something was wrong—but the TARDIS was the best indication that something was off. Providing that the Doctor wasn't completely bonkers with the whole the-ship's-alive thing.

Besides, if he wasn't the Doctor, they wouldn't be going anywhere, anyway.

* * *

The Doctor was just drifting in the Vortex. He'd had a long talk with the TARDIS, but…. He didn't want to admit it, but he felt uneasy. Things were starting to add up, and he wasn't entirely sure he liked the end result. He'd gotten used to this face, after all. And he wasn't all that rude. Well, yes, he was, but the same mouth that got him into trouble often got him out of it.

Or into deeper trouble, depending on the circumstances. But usually out of it.

He'd been keeping busy. It kept his mind off things. And then he'd set the TARDIS to random, and she had refused to take him. She'd tricked him. She'd taken off, yes. But she refused to go anywhere. She was punishing him. And he was trying to see if he could outsmart her without her knowing it, but, well, Time Lords and TARDISes being connected the way they were….

Something started ringing. The Doctor blinked. It wasn't the mobile Martha had given him. The TARDIS herself was fine, so no alarms there. But it was still nearby. Spying his coat lying where he'd slung it on one of the TARDIS's coral supports, he pulled himself to his feet and was soon rummaging through the coat pockets.

"Blimey, I need to organize this a bit better," he muttered. His face split into a grin when his hand enclosed on a small vibrating gadget that, to ordinary human eyes, may perhaps be described best as a cross between an alarm clock, Gameboy, and something else that had been reduced to an incomprehensible mess of wires. "Oh, I'd almost forgotten about you," he said. "Meant to put you away in the—oh, oh, what do we have here now, eh?" He squinted at the shaking screen, then flicked a switch to silence the alarm. And frowned. "Hold on. It hasn't even been that long, has it? Mind you, that's all relative, depends on your perspective." He checked the date on the screen. "Just a few months. They haven't even made it through the millennium yet."

Still staring at the screen, he walked back to the console. "Still, that's assuming that I made you sensitive enough to correlate the activities of _two_ time travellers," he continued, talking to the machine as if that were the most natural thing in the world. He fiddled with it for a moment, then plunked it down into a slot on the console and checked the readout on the main monitor. "What's Sam up against, eh?" he asked, tapping the screen. "How's he facing his destruction this time?"

The screen, of course, did not answer his questions; the device he'd built may have been sensitive, but it _had_ been a rushed thing, and he hadn't been able to equip it with _everything_ he'd wanted. Not when he'd planned to leave a corresponding part in the 20th century, no matter how close to the 21st century it was, despite a cloaking device. There were some chances even he wasn't willing to take, not without reason.

Out of force of habit, he put his spectacles on, studying the screen intently, memorizing the information it displayed. His eyebrows rose as one before drawing together to form a tight knot. "Hold on, that's not right," he said, rereading the screen a third time. "_I_ was at the Merivale stones in 1983 Devon that night, and Martha and I certainly didn't encounter anything dangerous there. We never managed to catch the Tryl'c'ark, but that's not…." He stopped. "But we didn't even…. So if…."

The Doctor abruptly began working the TARDIS's controls, setting the coordinates and talking to her as he went. "No arguments," he cautioned, pausing to look up at the column. "I don't really think we have time for arguments now. So let's just get this right, shall we? First try?" He smiled and patted her fondly. "Good girl. That's what I thought." He flicked a switch with one hand, fiddling with a dial with the other, and used his foot to push down another lever. The TARDIS jumped to one side as flight resumed, and he was reminded of why he never tarried in the Vortex if he could avoid it. Take-offs from mid-flight pauses were always rougher, though he doubted any of his companions would have believed it.

But he couldn't dwell on the past now. Well, not his personal past. Another part of time called. But first he just had to confirm some suspicions….


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's reading, and a nod to my first reviewers, Questfan and czarminotaur.

* * *

The whole situation was giving him a headache, and the blaring alarms didn't help matters. Al rubbed his eyes, sighing. If the Doctor had been here before, why had he come back to them asking all sorts of questions about the Project? Was their integration system more successful than they thought? Did the leapees really never know that anything was different? That's what they'd been trying for, after the incident with Frankie. A complete blank suited their purposes in some cases, sure, but in others, that was downright dangerous—which was why they'd been working on changing the system.

"But I'm right, aren't I? Of course I am. How often am I wrong? No, don't answer that. Thing is, if you're doing what I think you're doing, based on what you've done to me, why didn't I notice you more quickly?"

"What?" Al asked, having only heard the last bit of the Doctor's questions and not managing to follow what he _had _heard.

"Well, you're clearly playing with time," the Doctor said. "I ought to have noticed that. You've been at it for a while, judging by how smoothly the transition process went. That, and this room just feels…wrong." He shivered, frowning. And shook his head, dismissing whatever his thoughts were before voicing them. "Are you going to tell me how I got here or not?"

"I think you've figured it out," Al replied.

"Then how about how you're in possession of alien technology?"

Al groaned. "Look, if you think you can turn that alarm _off_, I'll let you out of the Waiting Room for the time being." The others wouldn't be happy with that, but he was willing to do just about anything to get that alarm to stop. He would swear the echoes were echoing in his ears now.

"What's the catch?" the Doctor asked lightly, springing towards the entrance anyhow.

He clearly didn't expect an answer, but Al gave him one anyway. "We don't know where it's coming from," he answered shortly.

Wariness that Al hadn't realized was present in the Doctor's features faded. "You didn't know you had this, then? Easy enough; I'll just track it down, remove it, and be on my…." He stopped. "Well, ordinarily, I'd be on my way. May not be until you lot move me back. Can't say I'm going to fancy the return trip, but I can't leave Martha alone now, can I?"

Instead of answering, Al called out, "Gooshie! We're coming out!" He hesitated, then added, more quietly, "It's the Doctor."

The Doctor looked at him quizzically. "You know, you seem to be taking this a bit better than I'd expected." Suspiciousness returned, and Al knew what to look for this time.

"You're on the base of a top secret project that deals with time travel," Al responded tightly. "And we've encountered aliens before."

"Ah ha! I _knew _that you got that—"

"Sam has, I mean. Dr. Sam Beckett. The person who…displaced you."

The Doctor's smiled weakened slightly. "Did he, then? What were they? The aliens, I mean."

Al knew better than to answer that, but even if he didn't, he couldn't recall the name of the aliens anyhow. He'd only heard it mentioned a few times mentioned in the conversation between them, and since Ziggy's records of that leap were practically wiped, well, it had slipped his mind. He hadn't thought it to be particularly important.

He was saved from having to respond when the door whooshed open. The Doctor looked amused and bounded out, leaving Al to trail after him. He stopped short when an MP pulled gun on him, and raised his arms slowly. "Bit paranoid, aren't you?" the Doctor asked, eyeing the soldier warily.

"He's clear," Al informed the MP, who promptly let them pass, saluting Al. To the Doctor, Al added, "We didn't have the best experience last time our leapee got out of the Waiting Room."

"So that's what I am, is it? A leapee? How did you invent that name?"

"Sam quantum leaps through time. So, if he's the leaper, you're the leapee." Al pointed up ahead. "That's the main control room."

"Is it now." The Doctor was studying his surroundings intently. "And what do you—"

When the Doctor stopped so abruptly, Al nearly walked right past him. "What?" he asked, already beginning to get exasperated by the man.

"Shshsh!" the Doctor held up a finger. "Listen."

"To the alarm?" Al asked sarcastically. But, when he paused, he had to admit that the Doctor was right. He could hear something, some extra wheezing sound above the constant blare. He hoped it wasn't some part of Ziggy malfunctioning; that was the _last_ thing they needed, what with everything they were dealing with now.

"Well, that certainly explains something," the Doctor said when the noise had stopped.

"Not to _me_, it doesn't," Al shot back.

"Maybe not, but things are a bit more clear for me than they were before, and I didn't even have to look to figure that out." He sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in thought. "Right, well, can't be helped," he said after a moment. "Either I'll remember or I'll forget and when the time comes to make that decision, I'll make it. Though I expect I'll know what I chose in a moment or two, because I'm really not _quite_ as good of an actor as I've been before." He looked at Al and grinned. "Come on, then. _Allons-y_!"

* * *

Sam was relieved when the woman let him be, and he began praying to God or Time or Fate or Whatever to send Al to him to figure out what was going on. He didn't quite have the man's character down—no surprise, seeing as he had no idea who he was, except that he was a doctor. The woman he was with clearly had some medical training as well, seeing how she'd wanted to check up on him and how she'd gone about doing it, but he knew he'd have to use her name sometime, and he only had one shot before he blew it. She was suspicious now, he knew, but he was clearly acting close enough to the man's character to not confirm her suspicions. Still, not an easy task. Especially when there was no clear reason as to why he'd leaped in here in the first place.

That, and he had no idea where—or when—'here' was. The woman was British, but he hadn't heard her use any slang that he could nail down to a particular decade. It was night, and they were in a sheep pasture of all places, but a road was nearby. That, however, was clearly not their destination. No, their destination had been a locked blue box, which Sam had almost walked right past in the dark. Of course, on their way back to that blue police box, Sam had seen something that interested him far more—parallel standing stone lines. And what irked him was that he _knew_ where he was when he saw them—at least, what he could make out of them, but, small as they were, they were unmistakable—but he couldn't remember.

A photographic memory wasn't much use when it was full of more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.

"I don't even know what I look like this time," Sam muttered, studying his hands. He saw his own, of course. He always saw his own body when he looked down at himself; he only saw whoever he had leaped into when he looked at his reflection. "Come on, Al," he called out, as loudly as he dared. "Where are you?"

There were no two ways about it. Clearly, for now, he was on his own. And he couldn't keep his lovely companion waiting. Sighing, he figured he'd have to follow her lead for his story. It worked well enough every other time.

"Doctor?" she asked when he came into view. She was leaning against the box, waiting for him. "Are you going to tell me now?"

"I wish I could," Sam replied wearily, "but I'm not sure I know myself."

She became instantly concerned. "What is it, then? What's happened? How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do?"

"I'm not sure," he answered.

She was watching him carefully, although he expected he was a bit more surreptitious in his studying of her. He watched her swallow, nervousness joining the concern on her face. "John," she asked slowly, her voice shaking slightly, "are you…feeling all right?"

"Just a bit confused, that's all," Sam replied gently. John. Excellent. He knew his name now. Doctor John something-or-other.

His companion looked crestfallen, but she plastered a brave smile on her face. "We'll fix you up, then, yeah? Right as rain."

He smiled at her, but it only made her fight back more tears. "I'll be okay," he assured her. "Don't worry."

"I can help you, just like last time," the woman promised. "I can and I will and…and no one will die this time." Sam couldn't hide the shock on his face quickly enough, and she hurriedly added, "Oh, I'm sorry, I guess it hasn't all come back yet, but I expect it will. It wasn't your fault, John. Not really. And if anything happens this time, it won't be your fault either."

Sam was really beginning to wonder exactly what his host did. He was a doctor, yes, but had something gone horribly wrong at the hospital? Had there been a mix-up in the medication? Was his host responsible? If so, why hadn't he leaped in to fix _that_? What was he here to change that was terrible enough to fix, but the death—or deaths—the woman alluded to were not so horrible that they didn't need to be changed?

"Look, you're chilled," the woman started again, changing tack when she noticed that Sam was shivering. "Here, how about I open up the TA—this magic blue box and we can go rest for a bit? I can put some tea on, maybe a bit of gravy in the pot if you're hungry."

Sam couldn't quite make sense of what she had said, especially the bit of nonsense about the box being magic, and he couldn't bite back his question for clarification. "Are we going home?" he asked softly.

There were tears running down her cheeks, now. No mistaking them, even in the poor light. "Not…not home, John. We can't go _home_ home. We're too far away. But…we can go in here, and it's as good as home, even better, I promise." She pulled him into a hug, sniffling a bit, and then pulled back to smile at him.

Sam watched as she fished a key out of her pocket and unlocked the box. "Come on," she coaxed when he didn't move. "There's room enough, if that's what you're thinking. I know you never saw it last time, but you've dreamt about it. You remember your dreams, don't you? All those adventures? All those wonderful, dangerous, thrilling, death-defying, brilliant adventures?" When Sam didn't answer, she bit her lip. "Please, John. Try. For me."

He smiled at her. "For you," he promised. She tried to grin back at him, but she could only manage a weak smile. Trying to hide further tears, she went into the box, leaving him to follow her.

He could hardly keep his jaw from hitting the floor. He looked around in wonder, staring up at the towering ceiling supported by what looked like coral struts. "Oh, but this is _brilliant_!" he exclaimed, staring around at the room. "It's dimensionally transcendental, isn't it? Oh, it's got to be! No other reasonable explanation. Well, not that there are a lot of people out there who would view it as a reasonable explanation when reasonable implies that it's always—" Sam stopped talking when he realized the woman was staring at him.

"Feeling a bit more at home now, are you?" she asked, smiling encouragingly.

Sam thought over what he had just said. He hadn't realized he was saying everything that was coming out of his mouth. It happened sometimes when he leaped, this taking on bits of the personalities of the people he leaped into. Although this clearly wasn't an average leap. He wondered when he was; far into the future, obviously. Perhaps that was why Al hadn't come to him; maybe they couldn't find him yet. He'd never leaped ahead before, not that he could remember.

"You know, I think I am," he replied, giving her a wide grin, trying to hold onto the bits of personality he'd gleaned from his host. He was relieved that she responded in kind; maybe he would be able to fool her after all. Still grinning like a fool, he closed the door behind him and then walked slowly up the ramp to what appeared to be the main control panel, looking around in wonder. The breakthroughs in science that must have made to achieve such a thing!

"So you're more yourself then, Doctor?" she asked, looking hopeful.

"Seem to be," Sam replied, running one hand over the mishmash of controls. Was that a bicycle pump? Considering that this must be the most recent scientific breakthrough within his lifetime, it did seem a little…run-down.

"Can I ask you something odd?" he said suddenly, looking up at her. From what he could tell, _odd_ was part of the man's character. And she seemed concerned with how he felt, and how much he remembered. He could play on that, use it to his advantage.

"Odd?" she repeated, some of the hope fading from her features.

"Yeah, you know. Strange, weird, out-of-the-ordinary. Odd."

"Yeah, I guess. Shoot."

All right, maybe it was a bit more of a gamble than he should be taking, especially since she'd already checked him out for a concussion. But he was too far along now to stop. "What year is it?"

The woman opened her mouth, and for a minute nothing came out. Finally, she said, "I guess you've figured out that it's not 1913, then. Try about seventy years into that future."

Sam stopped and stared at her. "It's _1983_?"

"I think that's what you said, yeah."

"_1983_?"

"Look, I know it's a bit of a shock, but you didn't really grow up in Nottingham, Do—John. Mr. Smith, I mean. Sorry. Keep forgetting. But, that…that part of your life…. That part was a lie." When Sam didn't say anything, she continued, "Look, Mr. Smith, I'm sorry if you think I'm acting above my position, but…." The woman shook her head. "For a minute there, you were the Doctor. Do you remember him? Do you remember the Doctor? He terrified you last time, but you were brave, and you accepted it, and…and you've got to do it again. Please, Mr. Smith!"

Sam blinked at her. Exactly _where_ had he ended up? Had quantum leaping somehow taken him through a gap in fabric of the space-time continuum, landing him in a parallel world? Because this, _this_, was not possible. And he considered himself to be open-minded. He _was_ willing to accept the impossible, even with just a minimal explanation. But _this_? It didn't even make any sense. How could _this_ exist in 1983? Project Quantum Leap hadn't even been finished then, not by a long shot, and they had had access to cutting edge technology. He _knew_ nothing like this had been available.

"It…it _is_ you, isn't it?" the woman asked, sounding a bit scared now. "I mean, he hasn't done this before, has he? He _said_ he hadidn't, but he says a lot of things. Well. He _implied_ that he hadn't, at any rate. Maybe because we're not at the school, and you didn't actually…." She stopped, trying to figure out how to say what she was thinking. "Doctor, are bits of John Smith bleeding through?"

"I beg your pardon?" Sam couldn't think of how to answer that question. Exactly _what _did she mean?

"You really don't have a clue what's going on, do you?" she asked, walking around the console to look at him more closely.

"Not really, no," Sam admitted, looking at her warily now. Had he blown it by asking the year after all?

"Oh, god, I'm such an idiot!" she said, shaking her head. "Do you even know where you are?"

He shook his head.

"You're in the TARDIS," she explained. "And I know you told me what it stands for, but I can't remember it right now, not precisely, and I don't want to muss it up. But do you recognize it?" She laughed nervously. "What am I talking about? Of course you don't. You recognize it for what it _is_, more or less, but you don't actually recognize _it_." She sighed. "Oh, god, how am I going to get out of this one?" She looked around the room, but nothing seemed to catch her eye. She looked at him again, and then pounced on him, drawing something out of his pocket. "Here, do you see this?" she asked, waving it in his face.

He stepped back and took it from her. It looked like a small metal flashlight. He pressed a button on the side and the tip lit up bright blue, emitting a buzzing sound. The woman was nodding encouragingly. "Yes, that's right. Now name it."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "I don't know what it is," he said. Honesty was the best policy, after all, and this leap had to be the weirdest one he'd experienced. Although, there were the vampires. Well, not vampires, but they pretended to be. That, and the aliens. And the ghosts which weren't really ghosts, though he couldn't explain how the housekeeper had….

Sam shook his head. He always had numerous thoughts in his mind, but he was usually able to give them a little more direction than that. _That _had seemed like random babbling. Well, not really random, considering that he _had_ been following one train of thought. It was just that that train of thought followed an elongated, jumping sort of track, and, well, he wasn't the best at comparisons, really, not all the time, but, all things considered, some of his spur-of-the-moment—

He shook his head again, trying to clear it. It wasn't working. And now the woman was looking at him again, with a cautious sort of curiosity. "Are you a different John Smith, then?" she asked. "I mean, if you're the one I'm thinking of, you…. I dunno, you wouldn't've still been listening to me, I don't think. You would have called this utter madness and left by now, even if you had nowhere to go." She swallowed. "Do you remember Joan?"

He shook his head.

She looked a bit relieved. Then, "But you remember me, yeah?"

He took too long in answering. "Oh, you don't, do you?" she asked. "God, I can be so thick. Martha," she said, sticking out her hand. "Martha Jones. Remember? We met in the hospital. I was getting trained. You were in for stomach pains that you'd faked. Or at least I think you faked them. And when I had to listen to your heart, and I heard the double beat and checked the other side of your chest, you winked at me."

He stared at her. "Don't recall that, no," he said, wondering what on earth she meant by a double beat. Surely if she was training to be a doctor, she'd know if it was some form of arrhythmia.

"Well, then, can Time Lords get amnesia?" She looked a bit frustrated now.

"What?" Sam asked, now thoroughly lost. Time Lords? What was she on about? Did she need psychiatric help? For that matter, did _he_?

"This is for real, right? You aren't just pulling my leg?" The question sounded desperate, and the woman—Martha—apparently realized that Sam's answers had been honest—excluding the lie of omission where he didn't _tell_ her who he was. "Oh, Doctor, what did they _do_ to you?" She didn't seem to be expecting an answer to this, either. Instead, she walked over to the chair—pilot's seat?—and plunked down on it, looking up at him. She looked exhausted. "You probably aren't the least bit tired, are you?"

"Not terribly," Sam answered, smiling slightly at her. He never leaped into someone feeling particularly tired, which was just as well, because half the time he ended up running fairly quickly, and he always needed to think on his feet. Even the time they'd spent wandering around hadn't particularly exhausted him.

She buried her head in her hands. "Look," she said, her words a bit obscured when she didn't bother to lift her head, "how about you tell me what you _do_ remember?"

"About?" Sam asked, buying time and wanting clarification.

"Well, not about me, since you obviously don't remember who I am. About the TARDIS, then. I've been babbling on and probably jumping to conclusions, so we'll start simple. Did you know what it was and just not realize that it was yours?"

"Mine?" Sam repeated. His host owned this? Scratch being a medical doctor, then. The mMan had to be a scientist.

Martha groaned. Lifting her head to look upwards, she said, "And after all I've seen him do, I thought that maybe being here would snap him out of it. Why can't I just be right for once?"

"Seen me do in terms of what?" Sam asked, figuring that if he was going to pretend he had memory loss, this was a suitable way to go about it. Besides, if he learned more about the man he'd leaped into, then maybe he could eventually convince Martha everything was fine. And if not, well, he could claim he'd had a relapse of sorts.

"Well, the list could go on," Martha replied with a chuckle, "but I meant in terms of stroking the TARDIS and talking to it. Her. Talking to her. You'd said something about having a connection once, I think. Or at least, that's what you implied." She threw up her arms and jumped out of the chair. "But, of course, if you're reverting to human, you wouldn't have that anymore."

"No, of course not," Sam agreed, sensing that that was what she wanted to hear. Then his mind processed what she'd said. "Wait, what? Reverting to _human_?"

Martha sighed. "It's going to be a long night, isn't it?"

* * *

The alarm cut off abruptly, the sudden silence leaving Al's ears ringing. He shot a sideways glance at the Doctor. "Was that you?" he asked, wondering how he could have stopped the alarm without getting near it.

"Well, I don't expect it was any of you lot," the Doctor replied. "Not if it's been ringing that long." His eyes swept the hallway. "You don't happen to a have a broom closet around here, do you? Or some unused corner?"

Al raised his eyebrows at that question. "End of the hall," he admitted. "Though I don't see how that's relevant."

"Oh, but that's because you aren't _looking_," the Doctor told him enthusiastically.

Before Al could respond, there was a crashing sound and a shrill shriek. "Sorry!" a voice called out. "Sorry, just…bit squished in here, didn't mean to startle you, sorry."

The Doctor sighed. "Sometimes I hate being right. Really have to watch what I say when these things happen."

"Al!" It was Tina, and she'd spotted him the moment she'd rounded the corner. "Did you _have_ to invite him back? We barely got over last time! You have absolutely no excuse to do this to me—us—_again_."

"What?" Al looked between her and the Doctor, who was looking faintly amused.

Tina's eyes found the Doctor. "What's he doing out?" she asked. "Or she, I suppose." Turning to the Doctor, she said, "Sorry, who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," he answered easily, grinning at her and offering a hand.

Tina ignored him, focussing again on Al. "You…you're…_how_?"

Al stepped back, holding up his hands to fend her off. "Don't look at me; I can't control who Sam leaps into anymore than you can."

"But you have to have set this…." Tina trailed off, glancing behind her. Al could hear footsteps now. "Oh, Al, at least tell us the truth this time."

"About what?" Al asked, still lost.

"Me, I'd wager," the Doctor replied cheerfully, rounding the corner. "Hello again, Al. I just thought I'd pop in and see if you knew what sort of danger Sam's getting into now. Sorry about the alarm; thought I had it programmed so that it would accept my presence when I arrived in the TARDIS. Didn't mean to set it off. Still, I don't—" He broke off, staring at the leapee who was now leaning casually against the wall. "Oh," he said in a small voice. "Blimey, I didn't think…."

"Ought to have," the other Doctor replied, straightening up. "You're ahead of me, from what I gather."

Tina rubbed her temples. "I'm…going to go get some coffee."

"Really didn't mean to startle you!" the Doctor called after her. "Tripped over a pail, hit something, door flew open, sort of fell out on top of…. Well." He shook his head. "All in the past."

"Relatively speaking," the other Doctor added. "It's just as much in the future as in the past."

"Yeah…." The Doctor trailed off, tugging at his ear. "Say, where are you, anyhow?"

"With Martha," the Doctor answered. "And I take it you aren't."

"No, but…. She's safe, really."

The Doctor looked a bit relieved. "Good. Good." He closed his eyes. "Just need to make sure I keep it that way."

Al was getting another headache, and this one hadn't started from a blaring alarm. "Let's go into my office. We can sort things out there."

"Brilliant idea," the Doctors answered in unison, grinning at each other.

Al could feel his headache getting worse by the minute.


	3. Chapter 3

"But why would Sam have leaped into _me_?" the Doctor asked, not really expecting an answer. "I remember that, and nothing unusual happened. Well, nothing unusual for me. Didn't manage to catch up with the Tryl'c'ark, at least not immediately, but they weren't a pressing concern. Certainly nothing Sam would need to change."

"Something must have gone wrong," Al said again, "for Sam to have leaped there."

"But it didn't!" the Doctor protested.

"Something must have changed," the other Doctor reasoned, "or I wouldn't be here."

The Doctor considered this. "Yes, I suppose. But, blimey, I never felt anything coming on, did I?"

The other Doctor shook his head. "No sign that anything was up to anything. Course, I've missed things before. On occasion. Rare occasions."

"But if you're here now," Al reasoned, suddenly realizing something, "then you'd remember what was wrong, wouldn't you?"

The Doctor looked at Al, and then at his younger self. "Well. Theoretically."

"What do you mean?" Al asked, wary now.

"If I'd been here before, do you think I would have asked Sam all those questions when I first met him?" the Doctor questioned in reply. "I genuinely didn't know anything about it. Well. Nothing substantial."

"You mean you're not just going through the motions?" the other Doctor asked suddenly, looking a bit worried himself. "Recovering from the forgotten expected shock, stating the obvious, and moving on to prevent destruction?"

The Doctor wordlessly shook his head.

"System must really work, then," Al said, straightening up again. "Glad to know we fixed it." They'd been tinkering with it, on and off, and finally settled on what they _hoped_ was the most flawless transition. Not that they would've felt safe with _too_ much tinkering, but Ziggy had approved every plan and monitored the changes and installations…and Sam had still leaped, so they hadn't done anything to keep him caught in the past, or worse, caught wherever he was in between leaps.

Both Doctors were staring at him now, and it was disturbing to see such a suspicious look on Sam's face. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever Sam's doing is what you remember," Al replied simply, starting to wonder if the effort it took to concentrate on Sam's image outweighed the headache he'd get by dealing with two identical aliens. "You just think it's you yourself that did that. Which is why you don't remember coming to the Project and meeting your future self."

There was silence. Then, "You do remember what I am, don't you, Al?" the Doctor asked. "Not human."

"I do try to keep that in the back of my mind," Al replied sarcastically. "But yes, I do. And it doesn't make any difference. Sam's leaped between species before. He ended up as a chimp once."

_Now_ the Doctor looked insulted, a look mirrored on his counterpart's face. "Oi! I'll have you know—"

He went on grumbling, though the other Doctor interrupted him, and for a moment Al could hear Sam's calm voice saying, "Point is, my mind's not subject to that sort of trickery. I'd remember." It was different for him, compared to everyone else at the Project; he heard and saw Sam as Sam and the leapee as the leapee, and that was only different if he concentrated on it—something to do with their neural contact, according to Gooshie. He was starting to wonder if that was actually a benefit.

"Then why don't you remember this?" Al shot back, not wanting to admit defeat when he didn't have a clear reason to do so.

"That's what worries me," the Doctor wearing Sam's guise replied. "Unless I purposely forget this, there's no reason I shouldn't have remembered everything."

* * *

Martha was at a loss. The Doctor hadn't warned her that something like this would happen. Then again, he never told her everything. Ever. She'd always thought he'd done that because he thought he was keeping her safe. Or because it hurt too much to talk about it. She'd had to push to get him to tell her anything about Gallifrey, and after that…. She knew not to question him now. She didn't want to cause him that pain again. Grief needed to be dealt with, yes, but he had been filing his away for who knew how many years, and she wasn't sure that he would take kindly to her prodding him to open the floodgates. She wasn't really sure how to go about it, even. Not now.

But now she had no idea how to deal with what she was facing. It wasn't definable, so she wasn't even sure where to start. She could see the Doctor standing in front of her, but she wasn't sure what the balance was between him and the other personality inside him. Maybe not the John Smith she knew, but someone was certainly emerging. And he'd been John Smith before, so maybe, somehow, all his acting…maybe it wasn't all entirely acting.

He'd told her the creatures they'd been chasing weren't dangerous, but she couldn't buy that, not now. They had to have done something to him. Even if her initial guess at 'relapse' was right, she didn't know who he was relapsing into. And from the sounds of it, he didn't either.

But it was all so frustrating! There were times when he acted just like the Doctor, but then…then he'd do something decidedly un-Doctor-like, and she wasn't sure how to face him. It had been easier with John Smith in 1913. Not that she'd had a clue what to expect then, either, not really, but she'd had the list to go back to, and she was able to follow what the Do—John Smith had expected of her. She'd managed to fit in, just like she'd needed to. And she'd done her best to protect him, really, but they'd….

And he was looking at her now. He didn't seem expectant. He was just quiet. Waiting, maybe. For her. Until she was ready. It would have reminded her of the Doctor, if it wasn't for the way he was doing it. He was watching her, yes. Out of concern, yes. But also to learn about her. He really didn't know anything about her, and now he was studying her. He didn't want to become someone else, from what she could tell, so he was watching her for clues to find out what was normal for the Doctor and what wasn't.

And she'd been giving them to him all along, which is why she hadn't been able to be certain.

He may not have been the Doctor, exactly, but this John Smith, whoever he was—he was similar to him. He still had bits of the Doctor. She had to focus on that. They'd figure something out.

But in the meantime, she had to say something.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she finally blurted out. "Before you came here, I mean." And immediately she started berating herself. John Smith had had false memories—this one would, too.

Except that he answered her. Sort of. "It's all a bit jumbled," he replied. "Bit hard to say what was last."

Martha drew in a breath, trying to organize her thoughts. "Tell me about yourself."

"Sorry?"

"Tell me about yourself. Who you are." She looked up at him earnestly. "I mean, what I'm saying now can't sound any more absurd than what I've already said, but who do you think you are? What background story did you have? John Smith, he was from Nottingham. His parents were Sidney and Verity and I was his maid and we…." She shook her head. When she focussed her gaze on him again, he was still looking at her, evidently confused. "I mean…. I dunno. What's your story?"

He seemed to think about this for a moment. He looked around the TARDIS again, touching one of the coral struts in awe. Instead of answering her, he kept examining the intricacies of the TARDIS, asking, "You said this was 1983, but you told me not ten minutes ago that we weren't in 1913 anymore. So when are you from?"

"2007," Martha replied. She saw his hand falter, and he spun around to look at her, gaze intense. "What?"

"This is all available in 2007?"

"What?" Martha blinked at him, and then realized what he was thinking. "Oh, no, no. No. It's…this…." She shrugged. "I don't know when this is from. I met yo—the Doctor in 2007." He seemed to deflate a bit at that, so she added, "Why? When are you from?"

"Not ten years earlier than you," he answered finally. He frowned slightly. "I think. I'm not sure how long I've been gone."

Even she had to admit that that sounded strange, even considering who she thought he was. "You mean…. You know you've been here before?"

He started to shake his head, but then stopped and instead craned his head to look up towards the ceiling. "I think I might have," he responded, looking thoughtful. "I can't… No, can't've been. Wouldn't forget something like this."

"It might look familiar because it's the Doctor's," Martha suggested. "John Smith didn't recognize it, or he didn't admit it, but he dreamt about it, every night. That's one reason he was so afraid to face the truth, I think. Because he knew what it meant."

"What happened to this John Smith?"

"I…don't really know." Martha sighed. "The Doctor never really explained it. He's still there, inside of you—him. Just like you were. Before you…emerged."

He didn't say anything for a while, and she started to wonder if he was going to snap out of it. But then, "I don't know if 'emerged' is quite the right word in this case." She waited, but he didn't elaborate. Instead, he said, "Remind me. These…creatures…we were chasing. Were they…? I mean, were you ever in any _danger_, per se?"

"Not that I could tell," Martha replied. "I mean, you didn't say they were a priority or anything. They aren't the reason we came here. We didn't even _mean_ to come here. You said you wanted to show me the Gate of Alagoriz—"

"Alguarzi," he corrected, and looked surprised.

"Right, that. Well, you were taking me to see that, but you...." She stopped. "How should I say this? You _miscalculated_. Anyway, we were about to turn back when you noticed the brownies, and then you started off after them, jabbering away as you went, and I followed. You never said they were dangerous. You actually told me they _weren't_. Just that they liked to sneak off and have a bit of fun at the expense of humans, but you had to get them out of here because aliens weren't accepted yet and you couldn't risk having that changed."

"Oh, oh, right."

Martha didn't say anything for a moment. But she finally decided she had to ask. "What's your name, then? I mean, you answered to John, but you also answered to the Doctor, and you're clearly not either of them…or at least not any of the ones I know. I mean, if the Doctor's done this before, who knows how many John Smiths there might be inside of him. So are you still a John Smith or…who are you?"

The man she knew was no longer wholly the Doctor took a deep breath. Blew it out. Opened his mouth. Stopped. Closed it, and looked thoughtful. When he finally answered, he said, "Sam."

"You went by Sam?" Martha asked incredulously.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with it, is there?" he asked. "I mean, you can't get any more common than John Smith, least not here, but it's a bit—" He stopped, shaking his head. "I've gone by a lot of names," he told her. "It hardly seems to matter now what people call me. But, since you asked, I'd prefer Sam for now."

"Sam."

"Yes."

"Sam Smith."

"Beckett," the man corrected. "Sam Beckett. Dr. Samuel Beckett."

"So you were a doctor this time and not a professor."

"I've been a professor," he said. "And a doctor. And a good many other things."

"Okay, but…." Martha sighed. "Look, correct me if I'm wrong, but there're still bits of the Doctor in you, right? I mean, I saw it come out, earlier, when you saw the TARDIS, and just now, when you corrected me, because you can't tell me there's any way someone from 1997 would have a clue about that gate you were taking me to."

"Seems to be, yeah," the man—Sam, she supposed—agreed. "Though, last I heard, it was 1999. Which would make it eight years earlier than you, I suppose. I don't remember much, but I think that I left in 1995."

Martha waved that off. "Look, focus on the Doctor, will you? I…I need to talk to him. Just for a bit."

"I'm trying," Sam replied, raising his eyebrows at her.

Martha groaned. She believed him. John Smith hadn't had _quite_ the same expressions as the Doctor, and this man was only just a bit off. "Okay. But…." She stopped, biting her lip. "But I need to know why you're here, or I can't get him back."

Sam sighed. "Something went wrong," he said. "I need to fix it. That's why I'm here. When it's fixed, the Doctor will come back. I promise."

"Well, let's fix it, then!" Martha urged. "C'mon, what are we waiting for?" She left it open for him, hoping he'd grin at her and say 'allons-y' before taking off.

He didn't. "I don't know what I need to fix," he explained. "And until I put right whatever went wrong, I'm not going to leap."

"What?"

"The Doctor won't be able to come back," Sam informed her soberly. "Not until I've fixed it. Whatever it is."

"Oh." She wasn't sure what he meant by leaping, but she figured she shouldn't push her luck. If she asked, she'd probably be treated to a Doctor-like explanation that made absolutely no sense to the average person. "How can you find out what that is, then?"

Sam looked down at his wrist and frowned. No watch, Martha realized. "Normally, I have some idea by now. But not this time."

"Oh." She was sure that she starting to sound like a broken record, but she really didn't have anything to say in reply. "So…what can we do?"

"Wait," he answered simply.

* * *

Martha had long since left Sam alone in the console room in favour of sleep. She'd looked exhausted, but he was certain sleep wouldn't come to him just yet. He was worried about Al, for one. Usually, he'd turned up by now. That, and he was fascinated by _this_, wherever 'this' happened to be, since he didn't quite dare to believe everything Martha had told him—or everything he'd found himself saying when he'd entered. He wanted to believe it, and he was looking at it right in front of him, touching it, feeling a steady pulse beneath his fingertips, but to think….

It wasn't _disbelief_, not really. He believed it, on some level. But he could hardly believe that he was fortunate enough for it to happen to him. But even though he thought that, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was all _familiar_. Perhaps it was as Martha had suggested—because this fabulous ship of sorts belonged to the person he'd leaped into. But he felt it was more than that, somehow.

He hadn't managed to find a mirror yet. That is to say, he hadn't looked. He hadn't dared to leave the console room, not after Martha had mentioned heading to bed while her room still remained in the same place so she wouldn't need to walk twenty minutes to find it again. She must have noticed the look on his face and misinterpreted it, because she'd hastily added that she didn't _blame_ him _or_ the TARDIS, just that she'd appreciate it if she was told when she did something to annoy him. And when he hadn't been able to find a reply to that, she'd admitted that, yes, perhaps it was _she_ who had been annoyed with _him_, and if the TARDIS really was sentient—Sam had thought that then was perhaps not the best time to pursue that line of thought, as much as it had startled him—then perhaps she _had_ needed some time to cool down, but she'd rather spend that time brooding than hiking the halls of the TARDIS. Which, of course, had had her shaking her head, swearing that she knew that it was good for her to walk off some of her frustration, but that, when it came down to it, she'd really rather that that be her choice.

After hearing all that, Sam was rather glad that she had left. He needed time to think.

"What have I gotten into this time?" he asked himself, looking down at the mishmash of controls on the console. He reached out to touch the central column, and the machine hummed softly beneath his touch. He couldn't quite see his reflection in the column, but he could make out a bit of his reflection in one of the screens on the console. If he wanted a better idea of his host's looks, he'd have to find a mirror, he knew, but he wasn't ready for that quite yet.

"I need you, Al," Sam whispered. "If I have to do a leap on my own, I'd rather it's not this one."

It wasn't just the fact that aliens were involved. He'd encountered aliens before, back when he'd leaped into a grandfather whose family was ready to have him committed for his supposed extraterrestrial sightings. He remembered that leap with surprisingly clarity, actually. He'd mentioned it to Al once, how strange it was how well he recalled the leap, and Al had agreed with him. Still, now that Sam thought about it, Al had tried to change the subject fairly quickly. And if Al was being evasive, it generally meant that Sam was trying to broach a subject that Al couldn't talk about without revealing something that Sam had forgotten—something strictly against Sam's own rules, according to Al.

Still, whatever those brownie creatures Martha had been telling him about actually were, they paled in comparison to what she'd actually implied—that his host wasn't human. But as far as he could tell, he looked human. So surely he'd heard wrong. Not that he'd actually seen the aliens in that past leap—just their ship. But the sight had been amazing, and he'd never forget it—or at least he hadn't so far. He'd seen plenty of things now, in all his leaps, but this?

Nothing compared to this.

Martha was from 2007. She'd been to 1913. They were now in 1983. He wasn't the only time traveller.

Maybe he could go home.

If the leapee, the person he'd displaced, his host—if _he_ had access to this, and he helped them out at the Project, they could fix the retrieval system.

He'd be able to see them all again, each and every one of them. Al, Gooshie, Tina, Verbeena—everyone, right down to the MPs who worked security at the entrance, the ones he'd seen every day when he came in to work on the Project. Providing, of course, that he'd left it the night before. Still, the thought that he might be able to go back to see them all….

Maybe that's why he'd leaped here. From what he could tell, there was nothing here that needed fixing. So perhaps he had leaped here so that the leapee could do the fixing, back at the Project. Then, he'd be able to go back. He'd be able to analyze what he'd done so far and control his leaps in the future.

If they had control of the experiment, then perhaps Al wouldn't have to worry so much about dealing with the politicians who seemed to constantly threaten to shut the Project down. And they'd be able to study the effects of the Project in more detail. Sam could recount what he saw, Al and Ziggy would have the records, and then they'd be able to compare with the history books to see how the change was recorded. And then they'd have positive proof to show the politicians, proof that the Project worked, proof of what they could do, and—

"But if we could control the leaps," Sam said slowly, the realization just striking him, "they'd want me to go back and change specific things, for their own benefit. And I can't do that. That's not what the Project's for. We're supposed to study the past, not mould it in hopes of shaping a better present. Just like…just like when Al wanted me to convince…because they threatened to cut funding…." Sam groaned, closing his eyes and slumping over the console in frustration.

He could only see two paths: leaping about in time forever, or leaping back home and destroying all his precious work.

The very thing he wanted most must never come to be.

* * *

A/N: *clears throat* Ahem. Please note that Sam's conclusions do not necessarily reflect the wishes and views of the author. However, at this time the conclusions were deemed logical, given the information available to Sam. No further comment, except a plea to not shoot the messenger, who adds that if questions and concerns are brought up, they will be answered as best they can in due time, circumstances providing. Also, a special thanks to Questfan for reviewing, with many thanks to my readers, who may be feeling slightly less kindly towards me after this chapter….


	4. Chapter 4

"What do you mean, you can't get a lock on Sam?" Al demanded of Ziggy. He had left the Doctor to discuss theories with the Doctor—that was going to give him one hell of a headache, no question about it—and was now in the Control Room with Donna and Gooshie.

"There is insufficient data, Admiral."

"We know he's in 1983!"

"That does not suffice, Admiral."

"But you've found him before when we didn't even know the year!"

"I am well aware of that, Admiral."

"Something's interfering, Al," Donna put in. "We've been trying to override it, but unless we can figure out what it is…." She trailed off, biting her lip. Shaking her head in an attempt to dispel her worry, she continued, "Ziggy…Ziggy calculated that it would be three point four _years_ before she had a chance of pinpointing Sam's location, let alone overriding whatever blocks have been thrown up and getting a lock on him."

"_Years_?" Al repeated. "Ziggy, it's England. Devon. Merivale. 1983. That's what we were told!"

"She's been searching, Admiral," Gooshie said without looking up from the computer screen over which he was bent. "We've even tried widening the search to the entire country within three years either way, but Sam's not there. Your leapee is mistaken."

"And when we're searching all of Earth's history that we can, just in case Sam's leapt into a relative again," Donna added, "it is going to take time." She was putting on a brave face, as far as Al could tell. "We know he's out there because there's someone in the Waiting Room. We just need to find him. And we will."

It took that long for Al to realize that Donna and Gooshie hadn't made any comments as to the fact that the Doctor was the leapee. "Didn't I tell you who was in the Waiting Room?" Al asked cautiously. He was sure he had; he'd said it when he'd told Gooshie that he was letting the Doctor out of the Waiting Room. Besides, they would've been able to record the conversation he'd had with the Doctor, and they only needed to hear it once to realize—

"We didn't quite catch it, actually," Donna replied. "Intercom's on the blink, but I won't let Ziggy divert any power to fixing it just now. I want her to focus on finding Sam."

"We only caught parts of what you said," Gooshie explained, finally looking up at Al. "I can replay it for you if you like, Admiral."

In the back of his mind, Al replayed a conversation he'd had with the Doctor only three months or so earlier. He'd installed an inhibitor of sorts to make sure that Ziggy couldn't make a record of him again in the time he spent at the Project. Probably hadn't intended it to last, but evidently it was. That, or they really did need to replace someone on the maintenance staff.

"Don't bother," Al answered, waving it off. "Ziggy, were you aware of that fault?"

"Of course, Admiral."

"And why did you not inform anyone of it?"

The stubborn parallel-hybrid computer took her sweet time answering that one. "It was a rather insistent request of an old friend of Dr. Beckett's, Admiral," came the reply at last. "When presented with such information, I could not refuse it."

"Ziggy!" Al snapped. "Exactly where do your loyalties lie?"

"I intend the best for Dr. Beckett, Admiral, and the others at Project Quantum Leap."

"Quite right," chirped a voice from the back. Al swung around to see the Doctor leaning against wall by the doorway. He heard Donna stifle a gasp, knowing she was probably thinking of her last encounter with the Doctor and the choice that she had regretted making ever since, though she'd thought she'd had reason enough at the time. And he didn't need to look at Gooshie to know that the man was staring at the Doctor in his typical bug-eyed manner. "Y'see," the Doctor continued, "Ziggy knew to leave well enough alone with me, and I didn't even have to mention all of the consequences of traces to her that I did to you lot. She hardly objected to my little installation last time, once I explained myself. Bit testy _prior_ to that, but she came around." He walked to the centre of the room and looked up at the computer. "But from your choice of words, I'd have to say you know a bit more than you did last time, despite my tinkering."

"Exactly _how_ did you get in here?" Donna demanded, looking more than a little nervous.

The Doctor smiled gently at her. "Donna Eleese, don't be afraid of me." He frowned. "Blimey, sounds a bit biblical, doesn't it?" He shook his head, waving a hand as he did so, as if to clear away the past. "Look, I don't blame you for what you did, and I only hope you'll forgive me for what I did in return, but I didn't think you'd give me a chance to explain myself properly, and I didn't have time to waste. I've had quite enough of military organizations for this lifetime, but somehow I keep coming back to them, don't I?" The last bit seemed to be addressed more to himself than to anyone else.

"Admiral," Gooshie asked suddenly, "if he's here, why hasn't Ziggy gone into lockdown?"

"No need to," the Doctor replied, cutting Al off before he could begin his reply. "She knows I'm not intruding. Well, technically I _am_ intruding, but she knows I don't mean any harm. Never do, really. Unless I'd warned someone that I'd have to stop them if they didn't stop whatever they were doing. But then sometimes…sometimes I need someone to stop…." He broke off. "Point is, I'm here to help. Ziggy knows that, and she knows that I can help, and she's willing to let me." He straightened up a bit, no longer in a casual stance. "If you are," he added, looking down at them. He waited a moment, giving them time to react. When they failed to do so in whatever time he had allotted them, he grinned and asked, "So, Ziggy, what seems to be the problem?"

"We can't get a lock on Sam," Donna replied, overcoming her shock and regaining her professionalism. "He doesn't appear to be where the leapee remembers coming from."

"The leapee?" the Doctor repeated. He looked over at Al, who glowered at him. "Oh. Oh. Quite right. Well. Can't have that, can we?" He turned his gaze to Gooshie. "Try scanning for residual interspatial patterns of temporal flux, and then you might have a shot at correlating that to your readings of Sam. Well, where you expected them to be, at least. Might turn something up."

Gooshie, who was too polite to tell the Doctor that he had ceased making sense, hesitantly asked, "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith, what was it you thought we should do?"

The Doctor blinked at him, momentarily forgetting that he'd been Dr. John Smith to them last time. He'd told them the truth, that he really was simply called the Doctor and that he was a time traveller and an alien at that, but they were content to believe that Al had been pulling a practical joke on them. Some scientists could accept who and what he was and leave it at that. Others could not, latching on to whatever they considered a logical explanation. And the rest he tried to avoid, because that lot knew what he was and was out for blood—all too often, his. And he didn't have _that_ many lives, even if he did have more than a cat.

"Right, this is _19_99," the Doctor said slowly. "Sorry. How is it that you locate Sam again?" Before anyone could reply, he started again, holding up his hands to stop them from speaking. "No, no, don't tell me. Brainwaves, right? You scan for his brainwaves. Hence the neurological hologram. Right." He frowned. "Shouldn't've needed to ask that. Must be getting old. _Any_way, let me have a look."

Al nodded to Gooshie, who stepped back from one of Ziggy's screens. He watched carefully as the Doctor began typing away, having slipped his glasses on without their noticing. "It's simple, really, if you know what you're doing," the Doctor said, punching keys like a madman. "Well, the equivalent is. Which is what I'm doing now, because it's compatible with your current technology and is going to be discovered in about two months anyway, and while I'm usually _very _careful about what I introduce and what I don't, I think I'm fairly safe in this case, seeing as…oh. Unless they…nah. But if they…." He frowned suddenly. "Hope you've got good blocks, Ziggy, or I've just gone and introduced another life-changing breakthrough to you lot. Well, perhaps it's not in the same class as fire, but still. You'd be surprised the uses you lot find for it in, oh, a scant hundred years or so? I shouldn't like to think that I gave it to you again, and this time simply because I was thinking it would be discovered in a few months time when in reality all that was discovered is what I've just done." He sighed and shook his head, but his eyes never left the computer screen. "Still, I'm fairly sure that if I try to erase something again, you'll want my head on a platter." He looked away from the screen then, grinning at Al. "Can't make any promises, though. I like to keep my promises if I can."

Something beeped, and the Doctor turned his attention back to the screen. "Ah, there we go!" he crowed. "Minuscule trace, but it's there." He hit a few more keys, frowning slightly. "Bit odd. Doesn't last long at all. Sam must've gotten into the TARDIS fairly quickly after he leaped. Which would be why you can't locate him. It's beyond your software. Sorry, Ziggy," he added, "but it's the truth."

"My observations of your behaviour have led me to accept your conclusions," Ziggy said. Al was rather surprised that she would admit defeat, but then she continued, in the same smooth voice, "But if you insist on trying to slip past my security systems again, Doctor, I will repel you. Forcibly."

The Doctor had the good grace to look a bit sheepish, but in answer to the question on his face, Al decided to elaborate. "Her bark's not worse than her bite. And she's channelling a fair bit of electrical energy."

"Right," the Doctor nodded. "Will keep that in mind, then." He stopped for a moment, then added, "Mind if I have a bit of a chat with your leapee?"

Al stared at him for a moment, rather startled that the Doctor would even _ask_—he'd barged in before and done things without their permission; why would this be any different?—but nodded his consent anyway. When he was gone, the questions began.

"Why is he back, Al?" The soft-spoken question came from Donna.

Al didn't have the heart to answer it truthfully—that the Doctor thought Sam was in danger—but he knew it was insulting to Donna to _not _tell her the entire truth. She was brave, and far stronger than he would have thought she could be, back when they'd first met. So he gave her the best answer he could. "The alarm, for one. He came to shut off the alarm. And to check up on one of the other alarms." Al sighed. "Donna, I'm sorry, but the Doctor's worried about Sam. He hasn't told me so much in so many words, but I know he's worried."

"Do you know why?"

Al hated to be the one to do this, but he could at least put a spin on it. "Not really, no. But I expect it may be because of our leapee."

"Who is it?" Donna pressed, looking like she didn't want to hear the answer.

"It's him," Al replied. "At an earlier time. Like...like when Sam leaped into Bingo."

"But how could he know that, Admiral?" Gooshie asked, looking more than faintly concerned at the prospect. "You don't remember when Sam leaped into you. It shocked you more than anyone."

"I told him that he wouldn't remember, but he was still concerned."

Donna looked a bit relieved at this. "Then Sam's not in as much danger as he thinks, if the Doctor's concern is because he doesn't remember."

"Hopefully," Al agreed. "But he still gave Tina a turn. Perhaps you ought to go check on her? She mentioned a cup of coffee, but I expect she wanted to lie down."

"Of course," Donna nodded to him. "And, thanks, Al. For telling me." She gave him a gentle smile before leaving the room.

That made Al feel worse. Because as far as he could tell, the Doctor's concern wasn't solely that he didn't remember. It disturbed him, sure, but he also claimed that he couldn't remember that anything was wrong—which is why he'd come to the Project in the first place, instead of going straight to Sam. And _that_ brought him to a question that Al didn't think he'd find a satisfactory answer to: was the Doctor from the altered future, meaning that Sam's leap was successful, meaning that they'd fixed whatever went wrong, and because their integration system really _did_ work, he knew only what Sam did, or was he from the current future, where something _had_ gone wrong in the past, and the reason the Doctor didn't know anything was off was because Sam was _in the process_ of fixing it and changing things? Or did it just come down to the Doctor's skewed sense of normality? Because, frankly, Al didn't have to know him very well to know that what he considered 'normal' was not what anyone else on the entire planet would consider 'normal'. Which meant it was quite possible that nothing was off in the Doctor's eyes.

Though, he had to admit, that _did_ go against what he remembered of the man. He did seem to recognize that what was normal for him wasn't what was normal for everyone else. Besides, the earlier one had agreed with the later one, which made it less likely that the Doctor was from the altered future. Then again, if he was from the currently unaltered future, something still had to have gone wrong. But, no, that wasn't it; the Doctor agreed that something had gone wrong. He just didn't know what it was.

And neither did they, which didn't help matters.

And until they could actually _find_ Sam, they weren't going to get any answers.

Which brought him back to square one.

It was past time to bring out the whiskey. At the very least, it would take the edge off of what was very quickly becoming a _splitting_ headache. And if he played his cards right, he wouldn't even regret it in the morning.

* * *

Verbeena had been, admittedly, a bit worried when Al had decided to let their leapee out of the Waiting Room. Unfortunately for her, Tina hadn't looked up to giving her any actual details. Judging by the woman's grumblings, she suspected Al of _something_, but she'd looked far too weary for Verbeena to want to press her for any substantial information. Furthermore, by the time she'd managed to extract herself from her conversation with Sammy Jo, Al had retired to his office, and she doubted that he would actually tell her anything of value even if she did corner him.

She'd seen Donna go by to check on Tina, and she'd noticed Gooshie in the Control Room, pouring over one of Ziggy's screens. Letting herself wander, she found herself back by the Waiting Room. When she passed the corporal stationed near the door, however, she was informed that their leapee had a visitor. She must have looked doubtful, because he swore up and down that he'd _triple-checked_ the man's papers, and everything was in order.

That, of course, only inflamed her curiosity.

She'd tried having Ziggy give her an audio-visual of the Waiting Room, but was informed that this was not possible. And Ziggy, stubborn as she was, refused to tell Verbeena any specific details. Even when she'd pressed, saying Ziggy hadn't had any problem earlier, the only reply she had gotten was that the situation had changed. Deciding that anything she learned could potentially help them locate Sam, seeing as despite the presence of a leapee, the Project's founder was still missing, she decided to visit with the two in the Waiting Room.

She only heard one word before the conversation ceased abruptly at her entry: Sam. She was regarded with wary eyes, from both the visitor—who looked a bit on the scruffy side, compared to the rest of the officials they'd had through at one time or another—and the leapee, but then the leapee's expression became a neutral that even she had trouble deciphering, and the visitor's dissolved in a grin.

"Hello there," he said, coming over to shake her hand. "I don't recall meeting you before. I'm the Doctor. Doctor John Smith."

She was surprised that he was British—precisely _how_ had they found out the Project?—but then she realized that he must still have American citizenship, and a good deal more than that in terms of documentation, or he wouldn't be this deep into the Project unsupervised. "Dr. Verbeena Beeks," she said in return. She was tempted to ask what he was _doing_ here, but she wasn't sure who Sam had leaped into, either. She looked at the leapee expectantly.

"Oh, I'm…not important," the leapee said. She felt a frown pull at her mouth and quickly smoothed it out. No wonder they couldn't find Sam; they'd been saddled with another leapee who wasn't talking. Not that that had ever stopped them from _finding _Sam before; just finding out why he had leaped there. But in the end, the problem remained on the same level.

"Well, perhaps I am," the leapee added. "Important, that is. But we're working on that." He jerked his head towards Dr. Smith.

Verbeena looked between the two of them. "May ask precisely how much each of you knows about our facility?"

"Well, I'm learning _very_ quickly that either you lot are further ahead of yourselves than I'd thought or we're in one tight spot of trouble," Dr. Smith answered. "Especially since I've been obliged to fill him in—but don't worry," he added, seeing the look on her face. "I've got Al's approval."

"Admiral Calavicci," Verbeena began, "is not at liberty to—"

"No, no, it's fine," Dr. Smith interrupted. "Really. I've been here before." He glanced at the leapee and then back at her. "More than once."

"Be that as it may," Verbeena said, wondering why she'd never heard of the man before, from either her colleagues or the world of academia, "it would not give you leave to discuss the workings of our facility with an uncooperative leapee."

"Oi!" the leapee said indignantly. "I'll have you know I'm being _very_ cooperative. Told them everything they needed to know."

Verbeena offered him a gentle smile. "I know this must be confusing for you. You've experienced some memory loss if you don't even remember the date, but I can guarantee that anything you say will be kept strictly confidential. You don't need to hide your name from me."

The leapee exchanged a glance with Dr. Smith, and Verbeena realized even before they turned back to her that they were one and the same. "I'm the Doctor," the leapee said. "That's the only name I've got now. Though I've been called a fair bit besides it."

What interested her most wasn't why he had said 'the Doctor' instead of 'Dr. John Smith' as the other one had, but the fact that neither of them seemed even slightly perturbed by the entire scenario, going so far as to discuss it with each other.

As if they were _used_ to this.

Or at least as if it had happened before.

Verbeena shook her head; she was reading the signs wrong, that was all. "I'll call you Doctor and Dr. Smith, then, shall I?" she asked, looking at the two of them. She could feel it now; it was going to be another one of those headache leaps. Like when Sam had leaped into himself. Or when he'd leaped into Al. Or when he'd leaped back into Jimmy. Or when he'd run into Alia _again_. Or…or the time they'd nearly lost him, with him leaping into Sam Biederman in time to receive electroshock therapy, though then she, and the rest of the staff, had had enough of a time trying to keep a cool head and find a way to rescue Sam without blowing all of Ziggy's circuits to bother with a little thing like a headache.

"That'll be fine," the Doctor replied. "And as for the date, I do know it, but it isn't helping matters much, and that's really why I'm here again." He nodded to Dr. Smith. "Something's gone wrong."

"If you are both aware of the Project," Verbeena said, accepting that they were, "then you will understand that Dr. Beckett will be fixing whatever has gone wrong."

"No, no. No. No, that's not what I mean," Dr. Smith put in. "Thing is, there's nothing for Sam _to_ fix. So why he leapt into me is, well, beyond either of us. But we're working on it. And then I'll nip over and check up on him, see if I can find anything else out."

Nip over and—? "I beg your pardon?" Verbeena asked.

"Well, I can't say I fancy going over it again," Dr. Smith said, "even if you did miss it last time. But I can assure you, Verbeena—can I call you Verbeena?—that I'll do my utmost to keep Sam safe. And I'm _trying_ to. I just need to figure out what went wrong."

"We'll take care of it," Verbeena assured them. "That's what we're here for."

"Sorry, but you lot don't have the technology for it," Dr. Smith told her. "Which makes it my job."

"Oh, and you have access to technology beyond ours?" Verbeena asked lightly. It was best to humour him, for now. These two clearly knew more than they were letting on, and she had to wonder who had informed Dr. Smith that he was the leapee, particularly since that was strictly against all sorts of regulations, and, frankly, how Dr. Smith had gotten here so quickly. _And_ why she hadn't heard of him before. That really made her wonder just who he was; she did have a fairly high security clearance, after all, and for him to be at the Project, he must be a specialist of sorts in a similar area, meaning that there was no reason she _shouldn't_ have heard of him. "I'd like to see that."

"Yes, well, the only one of you lot to have seen it is Sam, and it's probably best to keep it that way," Dr. Smith said. He looked over at the leapee. "I'm going to run a few tests."

"Remember to double check it," the Doctor cautioned. "With yours and mine. One might pick up on something the other misses. _Shouldn't_, but if things are changing on us, it's entirely possible that exposure time will amount to something."

"Of course," Dr. Smith said, nodding. "Wouldn't forget a thing like that." He grinned at Verbeena. "Very glad to have met you, but I've got to run now. Worlds to save and all. Might run into you when I come back."

Verbeena hardly had time to open her mouth before Dr. Smith bounded down the ramp, the door to the Waiting Room opening obligingly for him. She turned a baffled gaze to the Doctor, who was lying down on the table. "You really shouldn't need to worry so much," he said without turning to look at her. "I've a very good reputation. Well. Providing you don't talk to my enemies. But you talk to anyone else, and I can promise you they'd be singing my praises. Well, not _really_, but I've helped a number of people out of a number of tight spots, even if they don't know it." He turned to look at her then, and for a moment his expression was so like Sam's that she could pretend it was actually him in front of her.

Despite herself, she found that she trusted him. He hadn't given her any reason to, not really, but she did. And she didn't regret it, because somehow…somehow she knew he wouldn't deliberately try to betray her trust.

"I won't let anything happen to Sam," he promised. "He'll be safe. I'm sure he's brilliant. Well, I think he is. Or I will. Though I'm forming that opinion now, really, based on what I know of him. Still. While he may not exactly be an _ordinary_ brilliant human, it doesn't sound like he's lost sight of what's important in life. And I like that. Sometimes, if you do too much, you lose sight of what's important. I almost have, once or twice. But I've recovered, even with all those years behind me, I can still be amazed by the universe out there. And it's brilliant. Every tiny piece of it. Even the terrifying bits." He looked up at the ceiling again, but she suspected he was seeing something else.

It was a moment before he continued, and she found she didn't mind the silence. "There are so many different worlds out there, Dr. Verbeena Beeks. And each one has its own place in history. Some are forming their history now, some are lost in the dust in the stars, and some are yet to come, but it's all astonishing. And if you can look at the worlds around you with a child's wonder, so that you can look at something and really _see_ it, then you've a wondrous gift. And from what I know of Sam, I'd say he's got a bit of that."

Verbeena wasn't sure what to make of the Doctor, particularly since she'd feel more justified in her trust if she could place a reason behind it. "I'd have to agree with that," she finally said. "But, Doctor, you never answered my question. What do you and Dr. Smith know about the Project?"

"Well, he knows more than I do," the Doctor said, sitting up to look at her. "He's been here before. I haven't. But he's told me what _he_ knows about the background story, and that's not much. Just what Sam told him, I gather. He—"

"Wait, _Sam_ told him?" Verbeena interrupted. "But Sam's…." She stopped. "Oh, you mean before the Project—?" But the Doctor was shaking his head.

"No," he said, further emphasizing his point. "No, it sounds like I'll run into Sam on one of his leaps. I don't know any more than that; I'm not about to tell myself something like that. But, because it came from Sam, I'm trusting that my information is correct. I know how Sam leaps—risky, but impressive, and I could go on about it, and I'm tempted, but for time's sake, I won't—and how you contact him. Essentially, I know the how, the what, the where, the who, and I've a pretty good idea as to the why and the when. At least in general. Specifically for the leap Sam's on now, I don't know much more than you. I know what and where and when and how and who, but not why. And that's what I'm worried about. That's why I'm trying to find out what's going on. Well, him, I mean. The other me. Doctor Smith," he said, clicking his teeth as he said 'doctor'. He looked at her for a moment. "I must say, you're taking this rather well."

"Sam's leaped into a number of people," Verbeena informed him. He raised his eyebrows, asking for more information, and against her better judgement, she gave it. "This isn't the first time I've seen a visitor in the Waiting Room speaking with an older counterpart," she added.

The Doctor nodded. "Ah. Explains a bit." He was silent for a moment. Then, "What's bothering you?"

Verbeena blinked in surprise. "Why, nothing." He just looked at her, and she relented. "Nothing out of the ordinary; I'm worried about Sam, and…." She shook her head. "No matter; none of your concern."

"Maybe not," the Doctor said, "but maybe it is. I meant it when I said I've seen a lot, Verbeena. I'm a traveller. And my travelling has taught me a lot."

"Perhaps it has," Verbeena agreed, "but you certainly haven't published any of your work."

The Doctor grinned at her. "Me? Nah. Not my thing."

"But surely if you're a doctor—"

"I…am sort of…on an extended sabbatical. Very extended."

"So what exactly are you a doctor of?"

"Oh, this and that. I like to dabble in a bit of everything." The Doctor waved the question off. "More importantly, if I'm back here, then I can find a way to help Sam. I like to keep my promises."

"I'd like to believe that," Verbeena said truthfully, "but I'm afraid that if Sam leaped into you, then he is doing something that you cannot."

"Or fixing up a wrong decision," the Doctor added, voicing her thoughts. "But somehow, I can't help but feel that it's more than that."

Verbeena wanted to argue, but she had a feeling that the Doctor was right.

* * *

Sam was still staring down at the console in dismay, not really seeing it, just desperately trying to reason away the facts that had presented themselves in his thoughts. Never going home. Dying, sometime, on a leap. Or maybe just disappearing, caught in between somehow. Maybe scattered into atoms. But never leaping home, never seeing anyone else he had grown to dearly love again, his only contact with the present being Al. Al, his dear friend, the one he'd denied helping when he'd had the chance, hurting him terribly. And he'd done it twice. Once, it was intentional; he'd chosen not to tell Al's wife, Beth, that her husband was still alive and that he would return from the war—that he was just being held as a POW in 'Nam, that he'd come back—even if he had agreed to try to convince her not to marry lawyer Dirk Simon. But the second time, when he'd been to Vietnam himself, he'd indulged in his own selfish desires, saving his brother, and even though Al had _known_ that Sam could change history, change it so that he'd escaped and made it back home safe and sound years earlier…. He hadn't. He'd shown wisdom that Sam, blinded by his own desires, had refused to accept. The same wisdom that had had Sam refusing to tell Beth the truth.

The same wisdom that he knew he could not impart on the politicians. They'd be blind to it, just like Al had been. Just like _he_ had been, more than once.

He needed to distract himself. He started pacing round and round the console, trying to forget, trying to focus on anything, _anything_, but the horrible truth.

But it just kept coming back, haunting his thoughts, taunting him.

He stopped abruptly when he heard the sound of a key in a lock. Martha? No, she'd retired, gone off to bed, and this…this was coming from outside.

He faced the doors steadily, ready for whatever was about to invade the wondrous privacy of this astounding place.

But, no, his mind reasoned. Invade wasn't right, not if the intruder had a key.

The door creaked open, and a man poked his head inside. Scruffy brown hair, sticking every which way, came first, with the long, skinny body to which it was attached clad in a brown suit….

Sam blinked, looking down at himself. The _same_ suit he himself was now wearing. He looked back up at the intruder who offered him a weak smile.

"You're coping well," the man said softly. "Martha's gone off to bed, then?"

Sam opened his mouth, but he couldn't find his voice.

"I expect she did," the man continued. "Sorry for the intrusion, Sam, but things are a little different this time. I expect you'd agree with that assessment?"

The man knew who he was. And Sam had a strange, twisting feeling in his gut that he knew precisely who the man was, too. A time traveller. He didn't pretend to understand all the nuances of time, but he knew and understood enough to fashion Project Quantum Leap.

And he knew this was wrong. Some part of him, some tiny part, cried out in protest at the man's very presence. It just wouldn't supply a reason why.

"You're looking a bit peaky there," the man said, looking at him. "Expect that's me, sorry. But I'm _really_ sure that this wasn't supposed to happen, and I needed to find out what had changed, because I don't remember. I hate running into things blind, and I expect the last thing _you_ need is finding yourself facing some of _my_ enemies who would rather just kill you before they so much as bother to assess that you're you and most definitely _not_ me. Not that I expect they'd particularly care, being that sort. Might be a bit miffed that they didn't have me themselves. Actually, they'd probably be more than a little bit interested in you after all, meaning they'd hunt down the source and find the Project." The man grimaced. "I wouldn't be far behind them then. Might even be ahead of them, depending. But that's what all those alarms were for, really. Of course, I expected that to happen last time, but not to that degree, so I only put in a few warning bells, nothing more. The Anipalaxians wouldn't have wanted to seriously _harm_ anything. Well, not usually. That pair might've, but they've been dealt with, and…." He trailed off, peering more closely at Sam.

Sam found his voice. "Doctor?" he asked, thinking all the evidence he'd seen pointed to that conclusion.

"Oh, Sam Beckett, I am so sorry," the man said. "You really don't remember. I thought you would, once you got into the TARDIS again." And before Sam could comprehend the simple meaning of the word _again_, the man continued, "Yes. Yes, I am the Doctor. And you're in way over your head this time."

Sam had a sinking feeling; for the moment, it chose to settle in the pit of his stomach. He'd leaped into this man, and yet there he was, standing in front of him. It wasn't possible. Not unless something had gone horribly wrong.

Considering that, aside from the fact that the retrieval system didn't work, the Project appeared to work fine, just as it should, lack of fine tuning aside, he should really be surprised that something hadn't gone wrong earlier.

"But!" The Doctor grinned at him. "That's why I'm here. To check up on you. To see why you ended up here, now, where there isn't supposed to be any real threat or any wrong that you need to put right." The ship seemed to groan, a sound Sam associated with houses settling. "It's all right, old girl," the Doctor said, patting the console fondly. "I won't make a mess of things this time. I'm being _very_ careful. And this is just temporary. Just a check up. Now, let's see if you're getting any different readings…." He began hitting various buttons and flipping switches on the console, causing the screen he was peering at to flicker. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, tinkering with something else now, hands working by themselves, never taking his eyes off the screen. Something beeped, and the flickering stopped, the screen settling on a text of slowly revolving circles.

The Doctor didn't move, but the blood drained from his face.

"What is it?" Sam asked. He couldn't make hide or hair of what had just gone on, regardless of who he had leaped into. Snatches of personality were one thing, but knowledge was quite another. Well, usually. Small things sometimes stayed, like his knowing the name of the gate Martha had been telling him about. Or knowing a few rules or tidbits of information, such as how the leapee's favourite subject was astronomy. Or, in other cases, some advice that he could share with people, advice that otherwise he wouldn't have found himself giving, particularly on _that_ topic….

"Rassilon," the Doctor breathed.

"Sorry?" Sam asked. "What was that?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, it's…." He stared at the screen. "That's _impossible_."

"What is?" Sam pressed.

The Doctor stood up abruptly. He cast one long look at the screen, then dashed out of the TARDIS, calling over his shoulder, "Just need to double check something!"

Sam was about to follow him, but he suddenly thought better of it. Instead, he waited. Not ten minutes later, the Doctor was back. "Well?" he prompted.

"It's not supposed to be possible, not any more," the Doctor muttered, ignoring Sam at the moment and occupying himself at the console instead. "Then again, never really tried it, but I didn't think…_oh_."

"Doctor? What is it?" Sam quizzed, hoping to finally get some answers out of the man.

"You know that expression, a stitch in time saves nine?" the Doctor asked in reply, rocking back on his heels, turning slowly to face Sam again.

Sam nodded, wondering where the conversation could possibly be going.

"I've had to take it literally once or twice," the Doctor continued, watching Sam carefully for his reaction. "Well, more than that, actually," he amended. "End up doing it quite frequently." He frowned. "About as frequently as I find myself trying to patch up the big holes, actually."

"But that expression doesn't have anything to do with the fabric of the space-time continuum," Sam blurted. "It just means that you shouldn't put off solving a problem, since time will make solving it more difficult. Doing something now will stop it from becoming a bigger problem later. You have to fix something before it gets worse and it's harder to fix."

The Doctor just watched him, waiting.

"You have to fix…." Sam trailed off, realizing what the Doctor was getting at.

"You fix things yourself," the Doctor acknowledged. "Quite the handyman, you are." He stopped for a moment. "Sometimes I think you lot are rubbing off on me, with all your imagined science fiction. _Any_way, the point is, things don't always go according to plan when we nip them in the bud like that. No matter how good our intentions are."

Sam squirmed a bit under the Doctor's gaze. He didn't know how much the man knew about him, or how he knew him at all. And Sam had only just been thinking about the time he'd saved Tom…and gotten someone else killed instead. All for his selfishness, thinking that if Maggie had written up a story about the mission, they'd know how Tom had died, and he'd be able to…. But she'd never filed that story, and for a while, he had wished bitterly that he could forget the next time he leaped, that the Swiss-cheese effect he experienced would leave a hole in place of that particular memory. But later, he'd accepted the pain. It helped him to remember the costs of his actions.

And why being able to control his leaps would be more of a curse than a blessing.

"So sometimes," the Doctor continued, "a well-intentioned stitch doesn't have _quite_ the right effect." The Doctor sighed. "The consequences can vary. Sometimes a weak spot will appear elsewhere. Sometimes you end up drawing together two _very_ different parts of history, and that mess can take a while to sort out. Of course," he added, looking a bit thoughtful, "if you were clever, you could try to put a stitch in the wrong place to use those consequences." The earlier frown returned, deepening. "Why didn't I think of that _before_?" he muttered. "Probably because…." He shook his head and returned to the matter at hand. "Look, the consequences can be disastrous, but they don't have to be. Sometimes, you can fix them up easily, too."

"But if you don't fix the original problem, wouldn't that just make things worse?" Sam finally ventured.

The Doctor's expression darkened and he smiled a grim smile. "Precisely. Oh, not immediately. And it's a very long run before the effects accumulate enough to be noticeable, but it happens. Only then, other things will come to fix it."

"What other things?" Sam queried worriedly, not liking the tone of the Doctor's voice in the slightest.

"Things I would rather not deal with if I can avoid it." He fell silent. Finally, he said, "But it's different this time." Perhaps anticipating Sam's question of 'how', the Doctor explained, "We've fallen into a pocket. Pockets aren't like loops; time's not cycling, and things aren't repeating. Well, fine, _some_ pockets, if they're small enough, appear to be like that. But they aren't, truly. Not really. Well, I suppose that's due to the different classifications, and the chronon revolution pockets—" He broke off. "That doesn't matter. We're not in one of those."

"Are we in a different universe?" Sam asked, suddenly fearful that _that_ was the reason Al hadn't been able to find him.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. Same universe, all right. We didn't fall through any holes, any rips. More like, well, a crack, a crack that doesn't go all the way through. Same universe, but time…passes overhead, so to speak."

"What are you saying?" Sam asked, not sure if he wanted to trust his gut feeling, even if it, and his other instincts, hadn't led him down the wrong path before.

"We're just on a different level on the same universe."

"Meaning?" Sam prompted.

The Doctor looked like he didn't want to answer. "It's the same timeline, but it's split into two parts. They're running parallel to each other. They're not exactly the same, but it appears that way. I suppose, essentially, they _are_ the same, but…." The Doctor trailed off, casting around for an appropriate analogy. "It's like…it's like a strand of your DNA when it undergoes replication," he finally said. "It gets separated into two parts, and the missing half is filled in accordingly, matching opposites, leaving you with two identical strands. Complementary events. Parallels. It happens all the time, really. That's how parallel worlds get started. There'd be plenty more out there if I didn't fix things up before they fully diverged."

"Then how can you tell that this is different?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at him. "I'm a Time Lord, Sam. I can feel it. I just didn't want to believe what everything was telling me."

"But…surely it can't matter that much, if it's identical?" Sam asked, though even as he said it, he knew he was wrong. Like the Doctor, he had been trying to ignore his gut.

"That's the thing," the Doctor said. "It's _not _identical." Before Sam could open his mouth, the Doctor continued, "Sometimes, with DNA, you get single base pair mutations. Substitutions, additions, deletions, what have you. And something's changed. You can't always tell; sometimes it doesn't matter at all, when it comes down to it. But sometimes…."

"Sometimes the mutations are lethal." Sam felt cold. "So this timeline…it'll…."

"Terminate, yes," the Doctor finished. "And everyone with it." He considered for a moment. "Everyone in this part of the original timeline, that is."

"So I leaped here to…." Sam couldn't complete his thought. "Not to fix something, but to…to…_die_." So he would never have to find a solution to his problem, never have to worry about the damage that would be done if they discovered a way to fully control the Project….

The Doctor looked surprised. "What? No! No, of course not. What makes you say that?" He looked at Sam curiously. Sam couldn't meet his gaze. "Sam, you're going to be fine. Martha's going to be fine. _Everyone_'s going to be fine. I am not going to have an entire parallel die, not on my watch."

"But if this parallel is due to terminate," Sam said, "how can you fix it? It's not like you can just cut it off completely to diverge into a separate world. It's not viable; it won't last."

"I'm going to splice the original strands back together. Cut it off before it reaches the change, feed it into the original timeline again." The Doctor turned back to the console, his attention on the screen once more.

"But if it's that easy," Sam queried, suspicious again, "why all the concern? Why the insistence that this wasn't possible?"

He didn't receive an answer.

* * *

A/N: So, I hope everyone has a good Easter (even if you don't celebrate it). Just to note, I am sticking by the characterizations I established in _Patchwork_, and I'm sorry if the characters slip out of character every once in a while, but I am trying to work on it, and therefore accept suggestions, preferably detailed ones, though I reserve the right to ignore them if I'm desperate. Also, a quick apology to Questfan for, ahem, ignoring your request. Next time, I hope. But I did try to compromise, as I'm sure you'd agree….


	5. Chapter 5

"Nonononononono!" the Doctor exclaimed, wildly hitting keys. "No! No! It _can't_!" He stepped back, staring at screen on the console. "Oh, I can't believe it! It _is_!" And he went on mumbling, too quickly and softly for Sam to follow.

Sam wasn't sure how long he'd been watching the Doctor. He couldn't keep a sense of time in here. Martha could have left an hour ago, but for all he knew, it had been three. Possibly even more—he'd been plying the Doctor with questions for ages, although the Doctor didn't always explain things, too intent on fixing the timeline. Or at least that's what Sam had to assume. He hadn't taken his eyes off the Doctor, but he didn't know what the man was actually doing. He felt lost. He didn't know why he was here and he couldn't do anything now that he was.

"Doctor," he finally said, deciding that if the Doctor wasn't going to stop for a breath, he'd have to break in sometime, "is there anything I can do to help? What are we dealing with? What's happening?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, at first looking anywhere but at Sam, and Sam had to wonder if the Doctor had even heard him. Finally, however, the Doctor settled his wild gaze on him. "Look," he said, removing his hands and leaving his hair sticking out at odd angles, "this isn't anything that I haven't had to do before. But, truth is, I haven't had to do it alone. The problem comes in modifying the process so that I _can_, because I need to pinpoint the key mutations and isolate them and—" The Doctor broke off. "But I'll do it, I promise you. It'll just take time."

"Do we have enough?" Sam asked.

"I'm not certain," the Doctor finally admitted. "And before you even suggest it, before you even _think_ to mention it, because I _know_ it has occurred to you, the answer is no, and you know why. I'll cause too much damage if I try to go back and fix this at an earlier point. I could save this parallel, or I could destroy it. And if I lost control, then there wouldn't be anything that I could do to regain it. Even if I'm careful, the chances of inadvertently setting off a paradox…." He shook his head. "It's not a risk I'm willing to take. _Especially_ not with you. You're sensitive to changes in time now, more so than the average human and more so than even the people I take with me become. Your travel is risky enough as it is; anything drastic goes wrong in this past, and you're liable to be torn apart. _And_," he added, "you're unique because of it. One person in two parallels. You weren't duplicated, Sam Beckett. You're a lovely little anomaly to this parallel. Well, you and me both. I'd _thought_ it was a bit of a rougher landing than usual. Then again, usual being what it is…."

"And Martha?" Sam asked hesitantly. "Was she…duplicated?"

"I'm not sure," the Doctor replied. "I don't know when this diverged. It's still feeding off the same time, so I'm tempted to say no, but if this has been running alongside and just underneath us—relatively speaking, of course, because in reality, it'd be more apt to say it's running through us rather than even being superimposed on us, though that's still not precisely right—for a sight longer than I'd thought, then it's quite possible there's a Martha in this parallel who never encountered me. Or the Judoon, by extension. Or the plasmavore. Unless someone else intervened. Entirely possible, I suppose. But, yes, if there _is_ another Martha Jones in this parallel, then things haven't been affected too much."

"Wobble hypothesis," Sam offered, going back to the Doctor's DNA analogy.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, I like you, Sam Beckett. Yes. Like that. Silent mutation, neutral, no overall effect. But accumulative? We're looking at evolution, the formation of a brand new parallel world. Except, of course, for that nasty little termination codon that's upstream of us."

He went back to his work, but the silence was starting to get on Sam's nerves. "What did you mean, earlier," he asked, "when you said that you'd thought I'd remember?"

"I've met you before, Sam," the Doctor replied. He stopped his work, turning to look at Sam. "Not like this. I tracked you down this time. Mind, last time wasn't _precisely_ a chance meeting, either, when it came down to it. But, I met you, and you told me all about Project Quantum Leap. And then we dealt with some aliens. My line of work, I suppose you could say, but I would've been in a spot of trouble if it hadn't been for you."

"Aliens?" Sam repeated. "But I remember that leap. Quite clearly. I never met the actual aliens themselves, just saw their spaceship. Twice."

"I didn't run into you on that leap," the Doctor informed him. "I ran into you on the next one. The one you don't remember. But I seem to recall something about Al not telling you about things you don't remember, and seeing as that's your own rule, I'll abide by it."

The Doctor started to fiddle again, but Sam stopped him, catching his arm. "Tell me," he said. "Why would I have told you everything?"

The Doctor sighed. "You thought I was another leaper."

"Like Alia."

"You hadn't met her yet," the Doctor said gently.

"They were using her. I…I tried to…get her out."

"You did the right thing, Sam," the Doctor assured him.

"I don't know what happened to her," he admitted.

"She's safe."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

"But—"

"You trusted me before, Sam. I can only hope to earn your trust again."

Sam couldn't argue with that. "Just…if you were at the Project just now…."

"I can't tell you anything, Sam. You know that."

"I know, but…but I thought…." Sam shook his head. "Nothing's happened to Al, has it? I mean, if it had, Gooshie would have come, wouldn't he?"

"What?" the Doctor looked at him, genuinely surprised. "No, Al was fine. Well, the situation may have given him a bit of a headache. Well, me more than the situation. Well, me and the other me _being_ the situation…."

Sam looked relieved, but then he became worried again. "But if Al's fine, why hasn't he come?" A thought occurred to him, and he demanded, "He's not visiting in the Waiting Room again, is he? Because the _last _time he did that, I nearly…." Sam caught his breath. "I nearly…. I changed history."

"You always do," the Doctor pointed out, but Sam had a feeling that he knew what he had been implying. "But, no. Reason Al hasn't come is because they can't find you."

"What?"

"You're in the TARDIS. Ziggy can't pick you up."

"You mean all this time I could've—? But I wasn't in here the entire time!"

"Yeah, well, they were a _bit_ busy before that," the Doctor acknowledged. "I tripped the alarm when I ended up in the Waiting Room, and they were scurrying around trying to figure out how to shut it off." At Sam's look, the Doctor explained, "I put in an alarm. After last time. Just in case. It's…not time to tell that story now. Thing is, I showed up after that, and then I'm afraid I was monopolizing Al's time, trying to figure out why you'd leapt into _me_, and—"

"Why?" Sam interrupted. "Why am I here?"

"I don't know," the Doctor answered. "That's why _I'm_ here. To find out what went wrong. And why. So you can fix it. And then _I_ can go back and carry on my life as I should, and if I have to forget about you, then so be it." The Doctor turned back to his work, this time crawling under the console to check on something. "And, Sam," he added, "there ought to be a key in your pocket if you decide to go out. Unless it's still around your neck." He poked his head out. "What was I doing when you leapt in? Well, no, you wouldn't know that, would you? I'd've been gone by the time you leapt in…." He frowned, then shook his head. "No matter. Just make sure you have a key. I don't remember if I replaced the spare after I changed the locks. Had it stolen once. Nasty experience. Not one I want to go through again. Then again, it has come in handy. Like the time when the one I normally keep on me was stolen. So maybe I did. Replace it, that is. Don't recall."

"And you'll be…finding out a way to…sort all this out?" Sam asked doubtfully.

"Yup," came the cheery reply, slightly muffled again. To Sam, it sounded almost forced. "Though, if you do talk to Al, tell him to tell me—me, the other me, the leapee—that we appear to be in a continuous enantiomeric pocket of a Type LXXVI parallel."

"There're _seventy-six_ types of parallels?" Sam asked.

"Actually, there're several thousand by that classification system," the Doctor replied. "And it was considered archaic by the time I came around, with the system that replaced it differentiating parallels into tens of thousands by their…." The Doctor trailed off. "No matter. You'll remember the names used by the archaic system better than if I were to tell you what was considered standard. And you can appreciate that it's a sight simpler than the system the archaic one replaced. But, do make sure that message isn't mixed up while you play telephone. A Type LXVII parallel is completely different from a Type LXXVI parallel. Part of which has folded itself into a continuous enantiomeric pocket. Specifically, the part in which we have found ourselves."

"If you're worried that the message may be skewed," Sam asked carefully, "why not deliver it yourself?"

The Doctor emerged a second time. "You're sharp, Sam," he admitted, and grinned. "I like that. But, truth is, given the nature of the pocket, I'm not sure if I _can_ get out. Not without causing some damage to the chronon strands. It will take some _very _careful manoeuvring to slip out without gnarling them, and I'm lucky I didn't do any more damage getting here in the first place."

"But if you can't leave, what makes you think that they'll be able to locate me?"

"I'm working on boosting the signal," the Doctor told him. "And am playing on the fact that you're an uncopied anomaly with a natural ability to bridge the parallels." He was quiet for a moment. "And I'm hoping," he added finally, "that we're very lucky, and that your presence isn't a catalyst."

"But then…." Sam stared at the Doctor. "But then I'll only make the situation worse. Doctor, I'm here to fix things. You know that. I can't…I can't risk it."

"Sam, I'm afraid we don't have a choice," the Doctor informed him, clambering to his feet and straightening up. "This part of the timeline, this parallel, is going to end. Whether or not you go out that door. But if you go out that door, we may not have to fix this mess by ourselves. We'll have help. Or at least support. And information. If I can piece together the original strands, we'll be home free. But I'm going to need help."

"And that's why I'm here?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't I just leap into Martha?" Sam challenged.

"Because I have more experience now than I did then," the Doctor replied easily. "Please, Sam. Continuous enantiomeric pocket of a Type LXXVI parallel. If I'm working at this from both strands, I'll be able to put it together. But I can't do that if I don't know what I'm dealing with."

"So I'm a go-between."

"Sam," the Doctor chided. But then he relented. "Perhaps you're right. You were last time. But whatever your reasons for leaping, you can help me now. If you're willing. Please. You leaped last time, Sam. I'll make sure you do again. I promise."

"But not home," Sam said, almost bitterly. "Never home." And, unwilling to face the Doctor, he headed out of the TARDIS. He wanted his suspicions to be denied, but he was too afraid that they would be confirmed to stay.

Because some small part of him knew that the Doctor _did_ know whether or not he would ever get home.

* * *

"We've found him!"

Donna's joyful voice broke through Al's troubled thoughts, and he looked up. "Al, Ziggy's found him," she repeated, smiling through tears.

Al felt a weight drop off his shoulders. "Good," he said. "I'll be in the Imaging Chamber. Tell Ziggy not to waste a moment in locking me onto Sam, got that?"

"Understood, Admiral," Donna replied with a grin.

Al wasn't sure how it was possible, but he knew Donna worried more than the rest of them. And any complications they ran into on a leap, well…. It was irrational, but Al was fairly sure Donna blamed herself for every one. And not one of them could convince her otherwise.

Al breathed a sigh of relief when the swirling images around him in the Imaging Chamber settled and he saw Sam standing opposite him, looking in the other direction. "Sam," Al called, causing his friend to jump.

"Stop sneaking up on me!" Sam insisted, but then he laughed. "Al, I was beginning to think you'd never get here. It's been hours!"

"We couldn't find you," Al pointed out. "Believe me, we were looking."

"The Doctor said it was because I was in the TARDIS," Sam admitted.

"The Doc—?" Al looked around. "He's here? Where is he?"

Sam glanced around uneasily. "I think…on the other parallel."

"The what?" Al checked the handlink, making sure he was hearing Sam correctly. Apparently, he was.

"The other parallel," Sam repeated. "Al, it's astounding. According to the Doctor, the timeline has diverged into two distinct parallels. I leaped into the ot…but th…Al what's…on? Yo…ing up."

"Gooshie!" Al called. "What's happening?"

"There appears to be some interference, Admiral," came Gooshie's unsteady reply.

"Interference? With what?" Al demanded.

"We…seem to have some trouble determining that," Gooshie admitted.

"Well, crank up the power," Al hollered back. "I can't make out anything Sam's saying."

"We are, Admiral."

Sure enough, Sam's image settled down again. "Something's going on, Sam," he informed him. "I don't know how long we have."

"The Doctor must have known it would be difficult," Sam said, more to himself than to Al. "That's why he was boosting the signal."

"Sam," Al broke in, "what are you talking about?"

"Parallels," Sam answered. "It's amazing, Al. In all the leaping I've done, we've never run into something like this."

"Great, Sam," Al said, hoping that if he started saying something now, he'd be saved from an explanation that made no sense to him. "But do you know why you leaped in here?"

Sam shook his head. "The Doctor says he hasn't figured it out yet, either."

"What do you mean, the Doctor?" Al asked. "You leaped into the Doctor. He's in the Waiting Room."

"I mean the other Doctor," Sam said. "He came back here. Didn't he tell you?"

Al frowned. "Of course not. Look, Sam, have you figured anything out?"

"The Doctor said to tell you to tell the other him that he thinks we're in a continuous enantiomeric pocket of a Type LXXVI parallel."

Al stared at him. "Come again?"

"The Doctor thinks—"

"No, Sam, I heard you, but…what?"

"As far as I can tell, the part of the parallel that I leaped into has twisted into a pocket," Sam began. "It's similar, but in some respects, it's like a mirror image. The two parallels aren't quite identical, I mean. They _look_ similar, and for all intents and purposes, they _are_, but half of this parallel is synthesized. Half of it is a mirror image. And the Doctor says that he needs to put the original strands back together."

"Right." Al looked doubtful. "But he doesn't know why you leaped in?"

Sam shook his head. "No one seems to." He looked away for a moment, and then back at Al. "He says I've met him before, Al."

Al sighed. "You have."

"Tell me about it. Al, I don't remember a thing about him, and he knows everything about me and the Project! You can't expect me to go into this blindly."

"It's your own rule, Sam," Al reminded him.

"I don't care," Sam shot back. "Sometimes rules have to be broken. Please, Al. You told me my name. You told me about Tom. When I desperately need to know something, you've been willing to overlook the rules before. Why not now?"

"Sam, I don't know half of what happened on that leap," Al told him, sounding rather exasperated, even to his own ears. "And the Doctor essentially cleaned out our files of it. It may have only been a few months ago, but I don't remember everything. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't give you an account of what happened. And you're going to be asking me things I can't answer."

"Al—"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do anything." The handlink squawked, and he looked down at it, frowning. He hit it a couple times and rolled his eyes. "Great. The Doc's previous tinkering is still interfering. Look, Sam, our records are going to be spotty on this leap. And we're having a hard time keeping a lock on you. What did you want me to tell the leapee again?"

"That the Doctor thinks we're in a continuous enantiomeric pocket of a Ty—"

"Hold on," Al said. "Gooshie? Write this down, will you? Continuous antiomeric—"

"Enantiomeric," Sam corrected.

"Uh, make that enantiomeric. Continuous enantiomeric pocket in a…what?"

"Type LXXVI parallel," supplied Sam.

"In a Type LXXVI parallel," Al repeated. He looked back at Sam. "I need to see what the Doctor makes of this," Al told him, "but I'm coming back." He punched the appropriate code into the handlink to open the door to the Imaging Chamber.

"Al, wait," Sam called, reaching out a holographic friend to stop him from leaving. "The Doctor said one more thing."

"What?"

"That…." Sam trailed off. Al waited, wary now. "That he thinks I can bridge the parallels, but that he can't. So he's not going to make it back to the Project until this is over, from the sounds of it."

Al knew Sam well enough to know that that wasn't what he had originally intended to say. But he also remembered how far he'd gotten last time he'd tried to figure out what Sam was hiding from him. He decided, against his better judgement, to let it go—for now. "Okay, Sam."

"Goodbye, Al."

"Yeah. Yeah, we'll be seeing you." Al stepped through and closed the door to the Imaging Chamber, more anxious leaving it than he had been entering it.

The Doctor had said that Sam was in trouble. More than once. And they'd had a hard time maintaining their lock on Sam once they'd finally found him. In Al's book, that didn't bode well. And he had to wonder what Sam wasn't telling him. Sam wouldn't deliberately withhold any information that would help them leap him out of there, but he might….

No. Al wasn't even going to think that. Sam got out of whatever situation he'd leaped into. He always did. And he was right; failure didn't _necessarily_ mean that he was stuck. He'd either leap sideways or he'd leap on. But he hadn't failed yet, not that they hadn't been able to fix before it was too late.

Besides, if it wasn't something he could fix, he wouldn't have leaped in there in the first place.

At least, that's how it had been every other time.

But Al knew all too well, even from the last time they'd encountered the Doctor, that there was a first time for everything.

* * *

A/N: I'd just like to thank my reviewers (of which there have now been three different people, with Questfan being so kind as to drop me a note every chapter thus far) and admit that if you've read through _Patchwork _and are working your way through _Splintering_ and have been silent throughout, I would like to hear what you think—suggestions, criticisms, compliments, the lot of it. Feedback is helpful, after all.


	6. Chapter 6

Al left the Imaging Chamber, and Sam waited for that _shift_ that meant he'd slipped back to the other parallel. He was fairly sure that he wouldn't have been able to have had a conversation with Al without the Doctor's help. He wanted to quiz him, to find out precisely _how_ he had 'boosted the signal', as he had put it, but Sam knew there were more pressing matters at hand. He'd leaped here for a reason, and he needed to find out what that reason was.

This parallel was ending, the Doctor had said. And he could prevent that. But Sam couldn't see how _he_ could play a part in that, especially when the Doctor hadn't even properly explained the situation to him. And he had already determined that he hadn't leaped into the Doctor so that the man could fix the retrieval system to bring him home.

Working alongside the leapee—even at a time in the man's life after he'd been the leapee—was confusing enough for Sam. It had been fine when he'd leaped into Al. At least, it had been fine eventually. But Al had still been in the present, whenever that was. The Doctor was here, with him, in 1983. And he didn't belong in 1983 any more than Sam did. But he was here, because he was a time traveller.

How he'd managed to get through a leap working with the Doctor baffled Sam at the moment. The man's very presence threw history out of balance. They didn't even _have_ any information on this leap, and he was fairly sure they wouldn't have had much last time, even if he hadn't landed on a different parallel. As far as things went this time, everything seemed to point to the fact that he shouldn't have leaped here in the first place. At least, that's the impression that the Doctor gave him.

He wasn't sure what to make of the Doctor. Part of him wanted to trust, but another part was telling him to hold back, just until he had learned a little more about the man. But he was intensely curious. A time traveller. An alien, according to Martha. With a sentient ship. And one that was transdimensional at that. Alive, and…just a little bit run down. Meaning that the Doctor had been travelling for a long time. Far longer than someone would guess at a glance. But Sam had gleaned more from the Doctor than what he would learn from a passing glance, and he could guess at the man's wisdom. And his pain, the burdens he had borne over the years. And the wonder he had for the world around him. Sam could see a bit of his own curiosity mirrored in the Doctor.

It was enough to terrify him. If he truly marshalled all he knew…. But he couldn't. The Doctor was right; he didn't remember. He could tell that there was something missing now. But he wouldn't let that prey on him. He couldn't let something cloud his judgement, not now. Every time he did, something went wrong. Maybe not immediately, or perhaps they were able to rectify it, but something always went wrong.

He'd been leaping for a long time. He wasn't sure how long, exactly. The time didn't matter when it came down to it. He was tired, yes. He couldn't rest. He went from one life to another, always changing, always helping. But he'd learned to think on his feet. He'd learned to read people. He'd learned the best ways to quickly assess a situation and act accordingly. He'd learned about people, and in learning about people, he'd learned how important the average and the ordinary truly were, and he was reminded of what had kindled the desire to begin Project Quantum Leap in the first place.

He would get through this. Perhaps he couldn't reason why he'd leaped here, but they'd figure it out. And he would leap on. Maybe not home, not immediately, but…but he had to hope he'd get back eventually. He sometimes felt he was missing something, and he wanted to find out what that was. He had never asked Al because, even if Al would tell him, he couldn't explain it well enough to ask. It was just a feeling. Only…only he'd learned to trust his feelings, after all his leaps. So he couldn't forget about it all the time. He might forget for a spell, but something would trigger it, and he'd remember. There was some absence. He was missing something, and he didn't know what, and he didn't even know whether it was important or silly. Perhaps it was both.

Sam pulled a key out of his pocket. No more moping about. No more despair. No more worrying about things he had no control over. He needed to do something, and in the meantime, the Doctor needed help. And Sam was good at helping people, whoever and whenever they were. He could help here.

* * *

Al entered the Control Room and was treated to one glare and two pairs of anxious eyes. No, strike that. Donna looked anxious, but Gooshie just looked nervous. And he'd been through enough to be able to tell the difference.

And Tina? He didn't need to ask what was wrong with the Project's pulse communication technician. She was still sour at him. As if he could have pulled a joke like this off. As if he would even try. He loved her to bits—some bits of her more than others, he would admit—but sometimes, the things she got in her head…. Like the time she'd thought he'd been cheating on her, and she hadn't spoken to him for weeks afterwards. He wouldn't have minded so much if he _had_ been cheating on her, but he hadn't—it had all been because of a simple misunderstanding. But had she believed him? No. His reputation, she'd declared, was against him. Well, he couldn't find fault with that, but they _did_ have a relatively loose relationship, each with their own flings on occasion….

"Let me guess," Al said dryly, "handlink on the blink, like the intercom?"

"There appears to be some sort of…system malfunction, Admiral," Gooshie allowed.

"Al, make him fix it." Tina skipped the preamble, cutting right to the chase. "If you've got the Doctor in the Waiting Room, make him fix whatever he did to Ziggy. Because he _did_ do something, and we all know that."

"Believe me, I'd like to," Al told her sincerely, "but I don't know if that one can. And the other one's gone. He's with Sam."

"How is Sam?" Donna asked.

"He's fine," Al reported. "But, once he got over his fascination of the entire situation, he seemed to be about as frustrated as we were that we can't figure out why he's there. Or he would have been if we'd been able to talk that long."

"The precise location of Dr. Beckett was slipping, Admiral," Ziggy informed him in her annoyingly smooth voice. "You would not have been able to remain there for longer than two point three minutes before the lock would have begun failing again."

"Whaddaya mean, _slipping_?" Al asked, thinking that, inhibitor or not, Ziggy still seemed to know more about the situation than he did.

"Dr. Beckett's location was not stable," Ziggy replied simply.

"You mean he was moving?" Tina asked suspiciously.

"His location was not temporally stable, Dr. Martinez," Ziggy clarified. "You could therefore say that Dr. Beckett was moving in time."

"What?" The blood had drained from Donna's face, and for a moment, Al thought she might faint. "Ziggy, is he safe?"

"The data is inconclusive, Dr. Eleese."

"Ziggy," Al scolded, "don't. Donna, Sam was fine. It was just a bit of interference."

"Temporal interference," she corrected, staring at something no one else could see. "Once Ziggy was operating at full capacity, she was able to determine that it was temporal interference." She closed her eyes. "Al, I'm willing to trust the Doctor. Really. Even…even this one, the one Sam hadn't met. Let him help. Please." She opened her eyes. "Ziggy won't be able to fix this one on her own."

When the egotistical parallel-hybrid computer did not dispute the point, Al had to concede it. "We have to involve him anyway," Al informed them. "Gooshie, pass on that information I had you write down. It's from the Doctor, Sam says. And apparently only he will understand it. But I'm fairly sure it's meant to help, and I'm willing to take anything I can get." Turning back to Tina and Donna, he said, "Sam was talking about parallels, and about all he knows for sure is that he's not on the same one as we are."

"Then how could we pick him up?" Tina demanded.

"He said something about bridging gaps." Al shook his head. "I can't tell you verbatim; just the gist. But the Doctor's with him, and apparently he's trying to make it so Sam's signal is stronger so we can keep a lock on him, but they don't know why Sam is there any more than we do."

"I'll record what you can remember, Al," Donna finally said, breaking the awkward silence before it could stretch out any longer. "We'll see if we can fill in any of those gaps."

"Yeah." Al sighed; at least the Doctor couldn't destroy their _paper_ records. "And we'd bet—"

"Admiral," came Gooshie's voice as Ziggy patched him through from the Waiting Room—why, _why_ did only _certain_ things cause it to go on the blink? Al would almost have preferred it if the Doctor had made it so that Ziggy couldn't record _anything_. Then they'd at least know. "It, er, seems that Dr. Smith insists on leaving the Waiting Room. He says he needs to check something in our Control Room."

"Al," Tina warned. "We have rules."

"And we've broken them before," Al responded dully, thinking of Bingo. At least when he'd had the Doctor out earlier, he hadn't let him near anything important. "Okay, Gooshie. But don't let him out of your sight."

A scant few moments later, the door to the Control Room opened to admit the leapee, who looked for all the world like Sam Beckett, grinning away as they hadn't seen him do since the day before the announcement that their funding would be cut because they had no substantial evidence that their experiment would actually _work_….

"Right, now, first things first." The Doctor grinned at everyone, even glowering Tina. He settled back against Ziggy's controls, and Al was relieved to see Gooshie's flare of anxiety pass—apparently, the Doctor was being careful enough not to touch anything. _That_ was a change.

"I'd like to confirm that it _is_ a Type LXXVI parallel, myself. Not that I doubt myself. I just…well…." The Doctor stopped. "Let's just say I can't see how it's…." He stopped again. "Continuous enantiomeric pocket's a bit of a bother, but it's actually probably what saved Sam. That, and drawn him close enough to bridge the parallels in the first place. Y'see," the Doctor began, making gestures with his hands, "it's like…." He paused briefly, a slight frown creasing his forehead before he shook his head and continued. "You lot call it the string theory, right? Well, that's not exactly correct, but I don't really expect you to come up with anything better, really. _But_, based on that, to put it in terms you'd understand, your string has unwound into two identical strands. It frayed. Some of the frayed bits were just…lost. Shaved off. Unimportant. So the two strands _look_ identical, and in most ways they are, but they aren't _completely_ identical, and therein lies the problem in the parallel." He grinned.

Al had a sinking feeling that he knew what was coming. He did remember _that_ much from the last time Sam had crossed paths with the time traveller. The Doctor's pauses were nearly always followed by lengthy speeches, all too often nonsensical explanations or vague generalities or some tangent or another that really didn't pertain to the situation as much as it could. And, judging by the look of childlike glee that currently graced the Doctor's face, Al doubted that this time was an exception.

He wasn't wrong. "Problem in the parallel," the Doctor repeated, grinning wider than before. "Potentially pervasive problems posed proportionally to the precise probabilities of the particular parallels at possible points of promising predictabili—" He stopped, catching sight of their faces. "Sorry. Sometimes have this bad tendency to ramble on. Point is, the parallels aren't _really_ parallels, not when it comes down to it. Oh, in ten thousand ways they _are_, but there're going to be a few things that are anomalies. Like Sam. And me, I'd wager. Thing is, when one part of the string unwound, the other part coiled more tightly. Those parts are more stable. And Sam, well, if he's in a pocket, he's not in a stable part, I'm afraid. But he can clearly _use_ the stable parts as a bridge—tracing back along the string, if you will, to find the point of origin of the division, and using it as a springboard to propel himself to the opposite parallel."

"Meaning we could contact him." Might as well state the obvious, Al figured. He would have much preferred that the Doctor skipped the explanation, but even if Ziggy couldn't _record_ any of the information he spouted off, she might very well be able to pull something from it to research.

"Meaning you could contact him," the Doctor agreed.

"But that doesn't tell us why he's there," Donna finally said. "And without knowing that, we can't help him leap."

The Doctor sighed. "No. No, it doesn't." He kept his sombre expression for a moment before he broke into a bright grin. "But it _can_."

"You can help?" Donna asked, eyes brightening a bit. Tina's expression grew just that much darker, and Al figured he'd better say something before the Doctor put his foot in it. Or Donna got her hopes up too high.

"Donna, honey, he might be able to help," Al said gently, "but it's bound to take time. He only has what we do, after all."

"Oi! If you're referring to the fact that I don't happen to have my sonic screwdriver with me, I'll have you know that I didn't spend every waking moment saving the world with it," the Doctor shot back. "Really. You'd be amazed what you can do with a bit of string. Or a teaspoon. Or a kettle. _Or_ some copper wiring overlaid with—"

"Yeah, yeah," Al broke in. "I get it. You're not totally incompetent. But I don't care what you say, I am not letting you near Ziggy again, and that's bound to be one of your conditions."

The Doctor frowned. "Again? But I—_oh_. Right. I would rather you don't keep telling me these things. I mean, sometimes it's bound to be a great help, sure, but, really, _other_ times…." He trailed off. "Checklist can get lengthy." He paused. "But you're right. You will need to let me near Ziggy. Nearer than this, at any rate." The Doctor whipped around, scanning the panels, nose about an inch away from the controls. "Hm. Yes. I see. Yup, no doubt about it, I'll need to get nearer, see how you connected it all." His hand moved to his face and grasped air. He looked at it, frowned, and shook his head, dropping his hand back to his side. "Won't be able to do much otherwise, I'm afraid." He took in their expressions and sighed. "Look, I don't know what I'm going to do that's given you reason to look at me like that, but whatever I do, it's for a reason, and it's a good reason, as my standards aren't likely to change. At least not while I'm in the same regeneration. Though, as you pointed out, I'm not armed. I don't have any sophisticated little tools to destroy your technology." He smiled ruefully. "I'd say I don't have anything in my pockets, but that's a given because I don't happen to _have_ pockets at the moment, so I'll simply assure you that I don't have anything up my sleeve."

The room was silent of voices for a moment, but Tina finally spoke up. "It's not just what you did," she informed him, struggling to control her voice, "but what you _didn't_ do. I've forgiven you for everything else, but I don't know if I can forgive you for that. Especially once you understood how much it meant to all of us." She brushed past them, ignoring Al's murmurs, and left the Control Room.

"I'll—I'll keep an eye on her," Donna offered, a catch in her own voice. Al suspected she felt much the same, but was harboured by guilt—guilt for what she'd done, and for the fact that _she_ hadn't been able to forgive the Doctor yet, either, contrary as it was to her nature.

Though, come to think of it, he hadn't been able to forgive the Doctor yet. Al _knew_ that he knew how to fix the retrieval system. And refusing to do it….

But this was a different man. Al could see it. And he knew better than to hold something against someone that they weren't responsible for. This man…this man had seen terrors, yes. He'd seen wars. Terrible wars. Al had no doubt about that. He remembered the Doctor's face when they'd encountered those other aliens. He remembered the pain, and the sorrow, and the despair. He remembered the guilt. He remembered the grim acceptance. He remembered the pleading looks. And he remembered…he remembered what it had looked like, and how it had felt. And this man, well, he could hide it. He could hide it well. But Al knew what to look for, and he could still see it.

But this Doctor had not been through as much as the other Doctor. The other Doctor had been stripped of something recently, and to say it had been hard on him, well…. The loss of Martha, perhaps, although the Doctor had assured himself that she was safe, and his past self had seemed to believe what his future self had said, and Al figured no one would know if he was lying better than he.

But no matter the cause, the point still stood. They were the same person at different times, caught at different stages in their lives, and between the two times, something had changed. Al didn't know what it was—he didn't want to know—and he wasn't going to let the Doctor he had hanging around the Project know that his future was not necessarily a happy one.

They could ask this one to fix the retrieval system. Donna would certainly try, sometime, Al knew. But he also knew it would almost be better _not_ to ask. He remembered the answer he'd received last time, and he knew the answer wasn't one that would change. It wasn't a recent experience that was the result of the Doctor's stubbornness on that point; it was accumulated wisdom. To make the Doctor give the same answer would only hurt him. He wanted to help, Al figured. He just wished, for Sam's sake, that the Doctor would break his own rules, just once. Just…just so Sam could come home.

But the Doctor wouldn't. Or couldn't. And Al could curse it all he wanted, but that fact wouldn't change. He knew that. He didn't want to accept it, but he knew it. If he didn't ask, he could hope that the Doctor's refusals meant that they would be able to get Sam home sometime by themselves, and that in their experiences, they'd learn exactly what Sam had wanted to learn when they'd begun work on the Project all those years ago.

Al didn't want to think on the alternative too much.

"Hold on, are you sure that I told Sam to say a Type LXXVI parallel and not a Type LXVII parallel?" The Doctor was looking at Gooshie, who looked like he wished he'd made some excuse to leave the Control Room, too. Though Al knew Gooshie well enough to know that he wouldn't dream of leaving the Doctor with Ziggy without supervision. "Because they're two different things, really, and let's just say I know you lot aren't exactly…." The Doctor swallowed, looking for the right word. "Well, I know you, like me, and everyone else…. Well, maybe not _me_, not most days, but…. Let's just say you lot are prone to…mistakes," the Doctor finished. Al frowned at him, convinced that he'd been planning on saying something else to begin with.

The Doctor was tugging on his ear now, not looking at either of them. "See, I didn't really want to say it in front of…." The Doctor stopped. "Well, after I heard about Donna, I thought…." He broke off again. "It's just, a _Type LXXVI parallel_…." He trailed off, and looked between Gooshie and Al. "Are you _sure_ it's a Type LXXVI parallel?"

"That's what Sam said," Al confirmed. "I didn't get it wrong, and neither did Gooshie. And I highly doubt Sam did, either."

"I was afraid of that," the Doctor said. He sighed, leaning his head back to look up at the ceiling. "He could have left me a sonic screwdriver," he said, more to himself than to any of them. "I…. Even an old model, it wouldn't've been…."

"Dr. Be—Smith," Gooshie interrupted, "would you.... If it's not too much trouble, could you tell us precisely what a Type LXXVI parallel _is_?"

The Doctor brought his gaze back to meet Gooshie's. "I'd better spare you the details," he said grimly. "Let's just say it's not good."

"If you tell us what it entails," Gooshie persisted, "we will be able to help Sam."

"I don't…." The Doctor trailed off. "Ziggy, ol' girl," he started instead, "what are the chances that Dr. Sam Beckett of Project Quantum Leap is going to leap out of whatever mess he's leaped into?"

"The data is inconclusive, Doctor," Ziggy replied—refraining, Al noted with some surprise, from using the Doctor's pseudonym, as she had last time.

"Oh, no, it's not," the Doctor countered. "Because I'm here. And there. And I'm going to get him out of that mess. And he's going to leap out of there. One hundred percent guarantee, that's me." The Doctor grinned at them. "I promised myself, and I'm going to promise him, and I'm promising you, right here, right now. I am going to get Sam out of there. He's going to be fine."

Al nearly believed the Doctor, but then he added, "Type LXXVI parallel or not." And Gooshie's blanched face convinced Al that, somehow, they'd need to get Sam out, with or without the Doctor, and damn his parallels. He wasn't going to lose his friend.

* * *

A/N: A bit of a break in between finals makes excellent writing time for a student who is avoiding studying as long as possible, so this is up a bit earlier than usual. As most of my finals fall next week, however, it may be a slightly longer wait for the next chapter. We'll see. Anyhow, many thanks to anyone who takes the time to review, as I really do appreciate it. It's always encouraging to know that people are reading and especially rewarding if they actually enjoy themselves. As an additional note, if I do, at any point, manage to thoroughly confuse anyone beyond the normal good confusion that goes along with a story, feel free to drop me a note to tell me what makes no sense and I'll see if I can shed any light on the matter.


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor didn't look up when Sam came back into the TARDIS. He was busy quadruple-checking his findings. If he was right—and he really, really, never wanted to be wrong more than he did now—then he didn't have time for small talk any more. Didn't mean he wouldn't keep it up. Just that he…might need to be a bit more…_brief_ than usual. Which would be difficult with Sam, because Sam was the type of person who would ask questions, and he would even manage to ask the _right_ questions some of the time, and the Doctor would want to answer him properly, but he didn't have the time to do that now, because any explanation he gave would prompt more questions, and….

"I told Al."

"Good, good." The Doctor hit a few more keys, impatient. He had the distinct feeling that he was running out of time. And that…was never a good sensation for him.

"They still had trouble keeping a lock on me," Sam continued. "It worked for a minute or so, and then there was some sort of interference. It settled down again; I thought it meant that you were able to boost the signal."

"Yeah, managed that." The Doctor twirled a dial, filtering the data on the screen in front of him, searching out different patterns. "But, yes. Those chronon strands I was talking about before—positively saturated in artron energy. Bound to cause some temporal interference. You'd've had a moment's grace at first, before everything settled, before things had a chance to react. Well, I say a moment. You could have had only seconds. Less. Or more. Hours, years. Depends, really. The effects aren't necessarily the same twice."

"Due to natural fluctuations in the time stream or the unique circumstances of every situation or—?"

"Bit of everything, really. Can't explain it properly now, sorry. Just need to be sure." The Doctor tried reversing the feedback, just to see what he could get.

"About?"

"The…whole…situation. Current situation." No results there. Maybe if he recalibrated the—

No. Who was he kidding? It wasn't going to change. He'd run the data every which way. He needed to face the facts. Even if he didn't particularly like them.

A beep confirmed his suspicions. Well, he'd hoped. And wished. But, as they say, if wishes were horses…. Still. Had to make the best of it. Had to try. Had to…to…hold on, what was _that_? _That_ made things a whole lot…. That…that…. "Oh, that's not good." The Doctor frowned. "That's not good _at all_."

"What is it?"

"Oh," the Doctor said lightly, shaking off his expression and waving Sam's question away with one hand. "Not much, really."

"Doctor."

"Well, it's just that…. It seems when the denaturing occurred, and the strand diverged into two parallels, there was a slight…." the Doctor trailed off, catching sight of Sam. Contrary to the blatantly baffled or slightly glassy-eyed expressions he was used to seeing on his companion's faces during his explanations, Sam seemed to be drinking in every word. He'd done that last time, the Doctor recalled. It had been _very_ hard to lose him in an explanation. It had been a relief, then—proof that the entire planet wasn't populated by stupid apes, as his ninth regeneration had so loved to believe—but now, well…. Now, he would have preferred having a companion who could be fooled by what he was about to say.

After all, it was a lot harder to protect people when they knew _precisely_ how much danger they were really in, and when they had enough knowledge to begin acting in a way that they considered appropriate and which, in other similar circumstances, very likely _would_ be appropriate, but for the current set of circumstances they were in now, would most definitely _not_ be appropriate.

The way things seemed to be going, Sam's good intentions would probably just make things worse for him.

"How should I put this?" The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, not really looking at Sam. "There's only the one of me, I said. But I'd never been to the Project until I met you, Sam. And now you've leapt into me prior to that time. Which means that's changed."

"Not necessarily," Sam countered reasonably. "I know they've been working on the system, trying to make it so the leapee, when placed back int—"

"No," the Doctor cut in. "That's what Al said, and what I told him still stands. That primitive bit of trickery doesn't work on me. Especially when you haven't perfected it." More to himself than to Sam, he added, "Timelines are nearly twisting more now than they did with Donna."

"Then what are you trying to say?" Sam asked, now sounding worried.

"I'm…splintering. And…that's going to catch up with me." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Sam. "Probably very soon."

"Splintering," Sam repeated, his mind conjuring up all sorts of consequences. And somewhere, the Doctor knew, he had an inkling of the true weight of the word. Of everything it meant.

"Splintering, fracturing, cracking, what have you," the Doctor confirmed, his tone grim. "Because _you_, Sam Beckett, went back and changed my timeline. Oh, I'm not _blaming_ you," the Doctor added hurriedly, catching the horrified look on Sam's face. "Not when you still don't know how your leaping about really works. Just saying…well, just saying that I need to act quickly. Before it…ripples down to me. And what happens…happens."

"And what's going to—?" Sam stopped. The Doctor had turned his head, looking at the door beyond the console room with an expression of mounting horror. "What is it now?"

"What have you told Martha?" he demanded, rounding on Sam. "What did you tell her?"

"I…sort of let her make her own assumptions," Sam admitted. "You may know all about me, but I don't remember you. She knew something was off, and she finally confronted me about it, and…." Sam shrugged. "I think she thinks I'm a different personality of sorts. She wasn't making a lot of sense. Kept mentioning a John Smith like he was distinctly different from you."

"Oh." The Doctor's lips tightened. "Right. He was, in a way. Though I'm everything he was. But if that's what she thinks _you _are, then.…"

"I did tell her my name," Sam admitted. "But not who I really was."

"You may have to, before we're through. We'll play it by ear. I'd rather avoid if it at all possible—traces and all—but sometimes things just…_c'mon_." The Doctor was back at the controls of the console. "C'mon, c'mon, you can shift it here, I _need_ it. No, don't argue with me, old girl, I don't have a lot of time, and.... Yes!" The Doctor backed away from the console abruptly. "If you need me, I'll be in the secondary control room. Martha hasn't found it yet, I don't think. And when she comes in here, just after I've gone, don't worry. She won't have seen me. I…tweaked a few settings." Flashing Sam a grin, he bounded out the door and deeper into the TARDIS.

* * *

The Doctor hadn't moved much since she'd left him, Martha thought. Though, to be fair, he wasn't really the Doctor. He was no more the Doctor than John Smith had been. He was a completely different person, human, and the Doctor was buried in there—more or less. What she didn't understand was why this Sam Beckett _knew_ that. John Smith certainly hadn't. He'd been faced with the truth and hadn't wanted to believe it. Not that she really blamed him, when it came down to it, and he _had_ made the right choice in the end.

"Doctor?" she asked, biting her tongue the moment she'd said it. Of course not.

"Yes?" he asked, turning round to look at her.

But it wasn't him. It was still Sam. She could see it, now. She knew what to look for. "I was…hoping he'd be back," she mumbled.

The Doc—_Sam _glanced behind her to the door she'd just come in. "Not yet, exactly," he admitted. "Haven't made much progress, unfortunately. I still don't know what I'm here to do."

The way he said it struck Martha as odd. To her, it sounded like this…_persona_, for lack of a better word, of Sam was there to do something that the Doctor couldn't. And she wasn't sure she could name something that the Doctor couldn't do. Whatever it was, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

But if she didn't do something, she'd never get the Doctor back. Not really. "What can I do to help?" she asked. "I mean, there may not be much, but every little bit, as they say."

Sam sighed and levelled a gaze at her that was eerily like the Doctor's. "Time's dividing," he said simply. "It needs to be mended."

"And you can do that, yeah?" she asked. "With…help?"

"I hope so," he answered. He expanded on his explanation, continuing, "The timeline's split into two parallels, Martha. They're nearly identical, but not quite, and we're not on your parallel, not now. Not as I understand it."

She'd almost slipped into the mode where she nodded and agreed until he stopped briefly, at which point she could ask him again and he'd give her the simpler version, but then he tacked _that_ on and it jarred her. "What do you mean, not as you understand it?" she asked. "Doctor, if there's someone else who's—"

"It's Sam," he corrected gently. "And, yes, it's all second hand information. From…my help. Because right now, I can't…I can't figure this out on my own."

She walked over to him now, struck by how lost he looked. "It's okay," she said, glad her voice wasn't quivering, because she was sure finding it hard not to cry. "That's why I'm here."

He smiled at her, saying, "Thank you."

She didn't know what she was getting into, and she didn't know how she'd come out of it, but she knew that, no matter how horrible things got, she'd never regret her decision to travel with the Doctor. She couldn't imagine leaving, not yet, but someday…. She would, some day. She wanted to become a doctor, after all. She couldn't throw that away.

But now the Doctor needed her, and she wasn't going to let him down.

* * *

The Doctor closed the door behind him and just stood there. He hadn't been in this room in a _long_ time. Well, by human standards, at least. By his standards, it hadn't been really that long at all. Granted, by his standards, he was a lot younger than he should be, considering he was on his tenth regeneration.

On the last leg of his tenth regeneration.

Of course, he didn't really count how old he was. For one thing, life as a time traveller was complicated, though that's to be expected. For another, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to know. The only people who asked these days were humans, and most times he was happy to let them make their own assumptions. There had been a few times when he'd announced an age simply because the gravity of the situation had called for such a thing, but, honestly, he knew he'd seen more than a measly nine centuries. He just wasn't about to tell anyone that. Because even if he _was_ young by Time Lord standards, he felt positively ancient next to humans.

And no matter how much he thought to avoid them, he kept coming back to them.

Donna was right. He needed someone.

But Martha was also right. Oh, he'd known what she'd said. The TARDIS had picked up on it, through the energy clinging to Donna and the residue that still saturated Martha. She'd said what Donna had already known and had been willing to discard: that he was dangerous. Oh, it didn't appear that way, and he meant well, but he was dangerous.

Donna had learned that lesson. The hard way.

And then he'd made her forget it. Every single thing.

And it tore him to pieces.

All of them did. Donna, Martha, Rose...even Jack and Mickey, which was a surprising and slightly disturbing thought. But his sorrows weren't limited to this regeneration, oh no. There had been many, many others. Adric. Sarah Jane. Barbara. Jamie. Jo. Tegan. Ace. Grace. Leela. Zoe. Ben. Nyssa. Harry. Peri. Polly.

Romana.

Susan.

River.

And the list went on, and he'd be there for hours if he named every one of them. But he didn't need to name them to feel them in his hearts. And there were so many others whom he'd simply encountered, but whom he'd touched, and sometimes…sometimes his presence hurt them instead of helping them. Some days, despite his best intentions, people died.

Most times he tried to prevent it. Sometimes he allowed it. And sometimes he caused it.

He'd nearly lost track of time again. Well, not _really_. But still. He'd spent far too much of it reminiscing, berating himself for things that couldn't be changed, and he really needed to focus on the task at hand.

Sam needed him. An entire parallel needed him. Two, actually, because if he didn't figure this out, the termination of one would cause the eventual preliminary destruction of the other. But, simple answer. Splicing. Easy peasy. Easy as pie. Piece of cake.

…With two Time Lords. Each with the proper equipment. And preferably a third, given how tricky the process was, what with the scale of it all.

The Doctor sighed, pushing his sorrows aside. He really did not have time right now. Especially since he could feel that first crack that signalled the splintering. Perhaps that was why he'd allowed himself to be momentarily overwhelmed by memories and grief and pain and joy. But that didn't matter now. One little crack, well, it wasn't much. He could ignore it. If he concentrated.

Though it was a bit like having an itch that couldn't be scratched.

Still. Timelines to be preserved. And the damage was accumulating. Rather quickly, actually—more quickly than he'd like. The splintering only compounded matters, what with the parallel due to terminate and him being stuck on that parallel and Sam here to—

No. He wouldn't let him. Which was precisely why he hadn't told him. He'd find a way around it. He had to. His life depended on it. Sam's _task_—he could call it a task, couldn't he? That was close enough, wasn't it?—wasn't to keep him away, oh no. Sam was the one leaping around for good. And no good would come of ensuring that the parallel ended, especially since he'd probably leap out and the Doctor would find himself….

But that's what the splintering was, in a way. An ending. One way to nip it in the bud, that splintering, if he let this happen. But that made no sense. Sam's leaping was the _reason_ the splintering had begun; his leaping in had _caused_ it, so it wouldn't make sense that he would have leaped in to _end_ it. It, and the rest of the parallel. And possibly him, if he didn't play his cards right. Thing was, he wasn't sure he could, not like this.

Which meant that he was right, and the initial interpretation of the data was wrong. Sam was here for a different reason, not to ensure the destruction of a parallel and everything on it, him included. Things weren't supposed to go that way. Oh, he knew. Besides, there hadn't been any knocking. Surely the knocking would have been heard when he first came. Right?

Because this would mean death, if it happened. Not regeneration. There'd be no time for it.

No.

Sam was _not_ his executioner.

"What am I _missing_?" he hissed. He'd scanned fluctuations in the Vortex stability, cross-referencing it with the strength of the chronon strands. He'd needed to do that to confirm that they were in a pocket. Running the rest of the tests had been routine, a necessity for information confirmation, but this time, the basics didn't cut it, not for this. But everything else tended to take a bit more time than he had to spare, and he couldn't afford to start down the wrong path.

But neither could he afford this internal quarrelling. He needed to keep focussed. He'd reviewed the basics ten times over. Now, he needed to find the most probable possibility. That, of course, required more tests than he had time for. But, he was clever. He could make it work. He had to.

Grinning with something that was more grim determination than humour, the Doctor went to work.

* * *

"Dr. Smith," Gooshie asked carefully, "may I ask why you feel it necessary to review all of our records?"

"Course you can."

The Doctor did not continue, and Gooshie belatedly realized what the humour in his answer had meant; the Doctor had been literal, and was waiting for Gooshie to rephrase his question and repeat it. He recalled the day Ziggy had gotten into one of those moods, despite her insistences of being above that sort of thing, seeing as she was a computer and therefore technically did not have moods, since having moods implied having feelings. Work had been…less than pleasant that week. "Why do you insist upon reviewing our records, Dr. Smith?" Gooshie repeated.

"Oh, you know," the Doctor answered, waving a hand around him. "All this. New to me. Haven't run across it before. Which I find surprising, really. Brilliant, and I have to commend you for it, but, blimey," he looked over at Gooshie, tearing his eyes away from their records, "you do realize that Sam Beckett could have torn himself to pieces and taken this entire base with him, right? And if things had gone _catastrophically_ wrong, he risked terminating the timeline, and without so much as a moment's notice." Then the Doctor grinned. "But he didn't. In his brilliant, bumbling way, he avoided that without even knowing how likely it was to happen. But if I'm to understand everything I can about this Project," he continued, his tone slightly more sombre now, "I need to know everything you've done." He flicked his eyes back to the computer screen, opening and scrolling through a few more reports faster than Gooshie could even think to read them. "And now I have. At least, the official part. But that'll have to do for now, I think."

"And wh—"

"But, you know, the thing is," the Doctor continued, cutting Gooshie off, "if I, well, he, thinks that this is a Type LXXVI parallel, then that means he'll have come up with a preliminary hypothesis as to why Sam leaped in there. But I can't imagine that it would be a very pleasant one. So all that is is really _his_ way of telling _me_ to look through and see if _I _can find anything out from this end, since where he is, his hands are tied. But he wouldn't do _that_ unless—" The Doctor, who had been rambling at a hundred miles an hour, stopped.

"Unless?" Gooshie prompted when the Doctor didn't continue.

The Doctor looked at Gooshie, eyes wide with horrific realization, Sam's hair looking dishevelled beyond recognition, the blood drained from his face. The expression was one of disbelief and denial of an impossible truth that nevertheless had to be accepted. Gooshie had seen that look on Dr. Beckett's face once before, when he'd had to tell Sam Beckett that he would be shot in less than an hour and that they still hadn't tracked down Leon Styles, meaning that Sam wouldn't be able to leap out, but that look had only lasted a split second before it had been replaced with fervent hope and belief in Al. This time, the expression did not shift. And it had been longer than a few seconds, now.

"He meant it," the Doctor said slowly. "He'd never…. This is all…." His mouth kept moving, but his voice was inaudible.

"Dr. Smith?" Gooshie asked, looking from the man's bloodless face to his white knuckles where he clutched one of Ziggy's terminals.

"Sam changed my timeline," the Doctor stated hollowly. He wasn't looking at Gooshie anymore; he was staring down at his hands, but Gooshie would hazard a guess that he wasn't seeing them.

"Dr. Beckett leaps in to change things, as you've discovered," Gooshie told him simply, not quite sure why the Doctor was reacting the way he was. "He shifts something in the past, putting it right. That's how he leaps."

"Oh, you know that's not true," the Doctor corrected slowly. "You learned that when Sam leaped into Al. He would have leaped out even if he didn't fix the past. Even if all he did was make it worse." He shifted his gaze to Gooshie. "That's how Alia believed she leaped."

"We realized that, Dr. Smith," Gooshie acknowledged, wondering if he should alert Al to the Doctor's sudden mood shift, "but surely you can also concede that Dr. Beckett always changes timelines when he leaps?"

"Not like this," the Doctor replied softly. "It's different this time. I know how my past unfolded, and he—the other Doctor, the one I would have become, the one you met before—he knows how _his_ unfolded, and Sam's changed that. He's interfered."

"Dr. Beckett's leaping is defined by his interference," countered Gooshie, trying to quell his nervousness. He wasn't sure he could win the argument, but he was afraid of what would happen if he lost it. He didn't know much about the Doctor, really. He hadn't completed his review of Dr. Beckett's leap in which he had encountered the Doctor before the Doctor himself had blocked the files. And his conversations with the Doctor hadn't made any more sense last time than they did now. But he had learned enough to know that if a smidgen of what the Doctor said was true, they were in deeper trouble than they had ever been in before. And that was saying something.

"Some events can roll over," the Doctor stated slowly. "Some events don't really matter in the long run, and can be lost without causing any damage. Some new events are created. That happens whenever Sam interferes. Sam's not at a fixed point now, but he's in dangerous waters. With me being a time traveller, it's like…." He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. Opening his eyes again, he said, "If Sam had never gotten funding for the Project, if he'd never gotten support, none of this would be here. And none of his changes would stand. You would have been stuck before you'd started." The Doctor paused. Gooshie, who recognized the look on the Doctor's face well enough to know that he was going to continue, refrained from saying anything.

"Well, no," the Doctor amended, beginning again, "I'd say it's more like when you lot nearly lost funding, once Sam was leaping about in time. You ran the risk of leaving him stranded, all because you would have been shut down, and no amount of protesting would have made them change that decision without evidence that what you claimed to be doing was actually being done. And you couldn't provide that evidence. But Sam changed something, like he was supposed to, and the effects rippled outwards, so your funding wasn't cut off. He saved the Project, and he saved himself. But say for a minute that something changed. Say that Sam didn't manage to do what he was supposed to, or rather that it didn't have the same ripple effect, or perhaps that someone else changed something somewhere along the line, and the Project did lose its funding. All of Sam's changes since then wouldn't stand. But let's just say, for a hypothetical moment, that the future Sam, who would have continued leaping when the Project still obtained its funding, in the modified original history, came back and realized what was happening. Realized that the history where the Project received its funding has been altered. Because something changed, he would no longer exist. Not once the effects took hold." The Doctor stopped for a few moments, then added, painfully, "That's what's happening to _me_. To _him_. And he…he knows it. He knows that he's splintering."

The Doctor turned away, sighing, slumping against Ziggy for support. Gooshie stared at him, frozen, horrified by everything he was implying, as he added, "And I can't do anything to stop it."

* * *

A/N: As for the list of the Doctor's companions, I listed them as they occurred to me, skipped a few that I knew of and added a couple others I've only heard of but haven't actually seen in an episode (slowly working my way through it, though….), and I tried to get one from each regeneration. There were only the three deliberate ones that I felt would stand out from the rest, just on a _slightly_ different level of the same plane, if that makes any sense at all. But, aside from that, they weren't in any particular order, either.

On another note, many thanks to anyone who takes the time to review. I have to admit that I am curious—had anyone gotten far enough inside my head to see this coming?


	8. Chapter 8

"What do you make of this?" Sam asked, gesturing to the console screen.

Martha looked at it and shrugged. "Nothing," she admitted. "I mean, the TARDIS never translates that. And that other bit, the part that's not writing…." She looked back up at him. "It's just a web of lines."

"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Sam said. "I think it's a portion of this time stream, featuring the major strands. See, look at this one." He pointed to one line in the centre. "If you follow it backwards, there were two lines. They formed one. And that one," he continued, pointing to one off to the side, "does the opposite. It diverges. That's what happened to the timeline we were following," he explained. "What we need to _do_ is cause it to converge, like that first one, since we can't go back to the point of origin to stop the divergence. That decision has to stand."

"What was that decision?" Martha asked, rather relieved that Sam had actually explained something to her instead of babbling an explanation at her.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "I don't know if that's important." He frowned for a moment. Leaning back against the console, arms crossed, he said, "Tell me about your travels with the Doctor."

Martha stared at him. "You don't…remember, then?"

"Not that, no," Sam replied simply. "Would've remembered you, then, wouldn't I?"

"Point taken." She smiled at him. "It's brilliant, and I love it. Even if you can get us stuck somewhere. I mean, I met Shakespeare. There aren't a lot of people who can say that."

"Not sane ones," Sam agreed, laughing a bit. "But, even, look at this ship." He gestured to the controls. "She's been around a while."

"Well, practice certainly hasn't improved your landing skills," Martha informed him, laughing herself. "This last one was definitely one of the rougher ones. And I don't buy your claims of turbulence."

"What?" Sam asked.

"Well, you have to admit, if you hadn't been hanging on, you'd've been on the floor right next to me."

"Did you say turbulence?"

"Yeah," Martha affirmed, wondering what was going on.

"But wouldn't that only apply to space travel within the atmosphere? Were you in 1983 before this?"

"No. 1969. Long enough that I'm surprised you don't remember that, even if you are…whoever you are. Not entirely the Doctor."

"How does she travel? The TARDIS?"

"Well, it's not like you've sat me down and given me a lengthy explanation," Martha reminded him, "but we go through the Time Vortex."

"What is that, exactly?"

"I don't know," Martha replied. "It's just…the Vortex. That's all you ever say."

"If I assume that it's the time web," Sam muttered, "then there can't…." He looked up at her. "There can't be turbulence."

"Well, that's what you said."

"But turbulence would suggest that something's changing."

"And doesn't that happen all the time?"

"From one perspective, yes, but from another, no." Seeing her look, Sam explained, "If you think of it as now, then, yes, everything's changing. It's your present; it would have to change, or you wouldn't get the sense that time's moving on. But if you reflect upon your past—"

"Then what's happened…has happened. Right?"

Sam grinned at her, the same grin the Doctor always wore, not the smiles Sam had been giving her before. "Oh yes," he answered enthusiastically. "Exactly. So for you to hit turbulence, you would have had to have passed a fluctuation. But if you were following one particular timeline, you shouldn't have; it should have been stable. The decisions would already have been made. Even in the greater web, each line would represent something that has already happened, for someone, at some point. For that to change, for you to hit turbulence, you must have crossed a fluctuation. And the only way for you to have passed a fluctuation would be if you crossed paths with another time traveller. Or yourself, at a different point in your own personal timeline. Understand?"

"Right. Sure." Martha nodded.

"And if you were—"

"No, wait," Martha cut in. "I don't."

Sam looked around, and then untied his tie, pulling it off from around his neck and holding it out, stretched between his hands. "Say this is one timeline."

"Okay. Right."

"And there're plenty of others all around it." He waited for her to nod, and continued, "At any particular point on the timeline, you can look back, and see where that line has gone. As if you were reflecting on your past. And you can't see the future, not yet, but if you take another point, and call _that_ the present, then you'll see that it has followed a particular path."

"Okay."

"So, from start to finish, it's one line. But for you to have hit turbulence, someone would have to change the direction of that line. But the only way for that to happen—"

"Would be if someone or something is travelling in time," Martha finished. "Changing things."

"Exactly." Sam grinned the Doctor's grin at her again. But then the grin faded, and his shoulders slumped as he said, "It must have been me. You must have hit me. That's what pushed you onto this parallel. I caused this entire mess."

Martha smirked. "I doubt it's entirely you. I mean, look at the facts. You've been travelling for who knows how many years. And the Daleks have that temporal shift thing, which you said is how they got to Manhattan in the first place."

Sam gave her a confused look. "That's not what I mean. I don't travel the way you do, Martha. You or the Doctor."

"Okay," she agreed, "but, you know, I don't think that's exactly right. I mean, whether you remember it or not, you are the Doctor. Just a piece of him, that's all."

"I should have told you from the beginning." Sam sighed, the Doctor's face revealing ages of weary lines. "I just thought…. I mean, Al's always telling me…."

"Who's Al?" Martha interrupted.

"My friend," Sam answered honestly. "Martha, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not the Doctor."

"I know," she said. "You're Sam."

"And you're humouring me," he shot back. "Look, I still don't understand about this John Smith, exactly, but I'm not like him. He was part of the Doctor. I'm not."

"Of course you are," Martha corrected. "Or are you going to try to tell me that that entire speech on transdimensional ships was entirely yours?" She smiled. "I know it's confusing, but the Doctor—he's not buried easily. And he's coming out. Just like you did."

"Hear me out, please," Sam pleaded. "It's not like you think it is. My name is Dr. Samuel Beckett. I'm a scientist. I devised Project Quantum Leap—an experiment that allowed me to travel through time within my own lifetime. I leap—from life to life, person to person. What you see is just the Doctor's physical aura. He's not here; he's back at Project Quantum Leap, in whatever year is their present. I rarely know where or when I am until my friend Al shows up, but he's only a hologram to me. He's tuned into my brainwaves, so that I can see and hear him, but no one else can. Usually. But the thing is, when you called me the Doctor earlier, and John…. I had to respond. That's what I do, every time. I take cues from whoever I'm with when I leap in until Al comes to fill me in, after visiting with the leapee—the person I've leaped into, I mean. There's a risk that I won't leap if people know who I really am, but sometimes, like now, I make exceptions, even if Al doesn't approve. Normally it would sound crazy, and sometimes it even sounds crazy to me, but surely that isn't any crazier than, well, this." He waved an arm around him at the TARDIS.

Martha was quiet for a moment. "That's, well…. That's quite the background story."

"No, no, it's not," Sam insisted. "Martha, listen to me. I grew up in Elkridge, Indiana. I loved the farm, from the corn to the cattle. When I was younger, I wanted to be like my brother, Tom, and try for a basketball scholarship, but he convinced me to go to MIT. He recognized my potential. And since I've been leaping, I've realized how many lives touched mine, and how often I influenced that. The string theory of time travel—I'd conceived that with Professor LoNigro one summer, but when I was leaping, I realized that I also introduced that to myself when I was a child. I'd explained it to Moe Stein—Captain Galaxy—and I'd written him when I was young, asking about time travel, and he explained it on air as I'd explained it to him. But when I touch all those lives, when I leap, I create one of those fluctuations you hit. I create turbulence in the Time Vortex, which you and the Doctor hit, throwing you off course. But something must have gone wrong when that happened, because I leaped into the Doctor, and I wouldn't have leaped into him if I couldn't fix something that had gone wrong."

"It is detailed," Martha admitted doubtfully, referring to Sam's tale. "But, if this is for real, then how do you explain knowing some things only the Doctor would know? Like the gate you were going to take me to?"

"Sometimes I pick up aspects of personality or tiny bits of knowledge from the leapee," Sam explained. "Think of it as leaving behind some mesons and neurons during the leap. I access those, usually unintentionally, to give me a better idea of my host. But if I concentrate on them, well…. You saw what happens when it works."

"But…." Martha looked far less certain of herself now than she had a few minutes before. "But…if you're not the Doctor, then…." She shook her head. "What am I supposed to do? I mean, I could be stranded here. I'd never see Mum or Dad or Leo or Tish or—"

"No, Martha, don't worry," Sam cut in hurriedly. "If anything ever does happen to the Doctor, Emergency Programme One will be activated."

"What's that, then? And why hasn't it been?"

"I…." Sam stopped. "I…don't know what it is, exactly. Just that it means you'll get home. But it's not been activated because the Doctor's safe, and so are you."

"And because of that, I'm supposed to trust you?"

"You trusted me before," Sam reminded her gently. "Even when you knew I wasn't the Doctor."

Martha shook her head. "No, I knew you weren't the Doctor, but I thought it was still him, buried underneath. And now you just told me it was all a lie." She offered him half a smile. "Though I guess because you're telling me everything now, I have to give you some credit." She was silent for a moment. Then, "If you have to fix something to leap, and the Doctor won't come back until you do, then we'd better find out why you're here, shouldn't we?"

"That's what I was talking about earlier," Sam told her. "I've been studying the diagrams on the console for a while now, and I've been thinking about what you said. You hit turbulence and ended up on this parallel, Martha. And the thing with parallels is, you can't tell which one you're on, because they're so very nearly identical—at least until they're mature and separate completely into a parallel world, whereupon the accumulative changes would be noticeable. I think…I think I caused that turbulence. I think you would have been safe on the other parallel otherwise. And without the Doctor on this parallel, there probably wouldn't be an anomaly that would force the necessity to splice the parallels together. Which means when you landed here in the original history, you landed on the other parallel."

"Wait, hold on," Martha stared at Sam. "What do you mean, original history? According to what you were saying earlier, with straight lines, with your tie—" She stopped. "Oh. So this is another fluctuation, then, that would create turbulence." She swallowed. "Let me get this straight. You said you change things when you leap, yeah?" Sam nodded. "So what's happening to me, now, has already happened for you? Only, because you're here now, and you're changing things, you're rewriting history. Changing my timeline a bit, because you're you and not the Doctor. And the original history is what happened for you, but what's happening for me, now, is the…revised history."

"You, Martha Jones," Sam proclaimed, "are positively brilliant." He beamed at her, the Doctor's grand grin of approval, and she had to remind himself that he really wasn't the Doctor, no matter how much he looked like him. "But, because you hit that turbulence, you landed on this parallel instead. But you weren't supposed to. And now that you have, the Doctor has to splice the parallels together instead of cutting them apart. Only he can't do that by himself, I don't think. Which is why he needs me. That's why I'm here, I think. To help him."

"Wait. Just…wait." Martha held up her hands. "Why do these parallels matter so much?"

"Because this one isn't viable, Martha. Something's gone wrong, and it's going to end."

"What?" She stared at him. "This parallel is going to end?" Sam nodded. "But…how is the Doctor supposed to fix this, when he's not even here? I mean, if he's back in—sorry, when did you say you were from, again?"

"I believe that my relative present is currently anchored in 1999," Sam replied. "At least, I think that that's what I heard last. Though I expect Al will let me know when we reach the millennium. He won't be able to resist telling me about the night he had, ringing in the new millennium." Sam stopped. "Unless he has told me already, and I've just forgotten."

"Okay. Right." Martha shook her head. "Look, no offense, but even with 1999's cutting edge technology, the Doctor won't be able to fix this mess from there. Well, maybe, but…. I mean, sure he's inventive and clever and all, but how quickly do you think he could fix things when he has to scavenge and cobble together some piece of technology to do this? If he needs to fix this, you're not helping matters by leaping into him and trapping him there, away from the TARDIS." She was silent for a moment. "You can leap into anyone, right?" Sam nodded, so she continued, "So if you leaped in just to help the Doctor, then it would've made more sense for you to leap into me, wouldn't it? I mean, you'd probably be more help to him than me. I'm studying medicine, not the science behind time travel."

"I asked the same question," Sam admitted.

"And?"

"I don't think I know the real answer yet." That was true, as far as Sam was concerned. He didn't believe the Doctor's simple claim of experience, and he didn't want to think that he had leaped in here for a reason other than to help the Doctor. Because if he was the cause of the turbulence that had shunted them onto this parallel—for surely the Doctor would be watching out for the disturbances he had caused—then the Doctor's predicament was entirely his fault. And he knew he hadn't imagined the fear or pain he'd seen on the Doctor's face as he spoke of splintering.

* * *

Al saw Dr. Verbeena Beeks heading towards him and sighed. With his luck, she wouldn't leave him alone. Actually, he'd been expecting her to corner him earlier. He kept chalking his escapes up to good luck. Now, he was caught out in the open. But if he couldn't avoid the attack, he could at least lessen its ferocity. And he was fairly sure Beeks wouldn't say as much as she wanted in front of anyone else, so all he had to do was get to the Control Room.

"Admiral," Beeks called, increasing her pace to catch up with him. "Al, hold up a minute."

Pretending he didn't hear her, he turned into the Control Room. Excellent. Both Gooshie and the Doctor there. Beeks certainly wouldn't give him try to give him the third degree with their leapee there. "How's it going?" Al asked, not sure he liked the look on Gooshie's face, let alone the Doctor's.

"Al," Beeks began, coming into the room. She stopped short at the sight of the Doctor. "Admiral," she corrected. "May I have a word?"

"Once I'm finished here," Al reluctantly agreed, planning to drag it out as long as possible and then try avoiding her again. Beeks's lips tightened, meaning she was on to him, but she nodded, and Al continued, "Ziggy, can you locate Sam?"

"Negative, Admiral."

"So much for keeping in touch," Al muttered. "Gooshie, what have you found out?"

"I…. That is, it appears, Admiral, that…." Gooshie kept trailing off, unsure of how to answer the question. "Dr. Smith has…. Dr. Beckett may not be our immediate concern, Admiral."

"What?" Al looked from Gooshie to the Doctor to Ziggy and back again. "What do you mean?"

"As I understand it, Admiral, Dr. Smith is…splintering."

"Splintering?" Al repeated. "What the hell is splintering?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," the Doctor responded grimly. "And he means the other me, not this me." He straightened up, his face unreadable. "When Sam leaped into me, he didn't just land in a pocket on another parallel. He changed my timeline. That can't be undone." He leaned back against Ziggy, closing his eyes. "When you get in contact with Sam, Al," he said, not bothering to open them again, "take me into the Imaging Chamber with you. I need to talk to him. Well, through you, unless I have enough time to do some more fiddling. And I need you to tell me what you see if I don't, because I need to know what they've done. Well, providing I can tweak things here and get you a signal in the TARDIS, at least temporarily." Leaning forward and opening his eyes, he continued, "Because I'm not sure exactly how long I'll be around to help Sam out."

"You're not telling me that you think Sam leaped into you to change your timeline just by bringing you to the Project early," Al stated incredulously. "Are you?"

"No. Well, I hope not." The Doctor sighed. "But I'd rather like to find out what my other self thinks. What he's found out."

"Ziggy," Beeks asked slowly, "would it be possible for you to sync the Doctor's brainwaves with Sam's?"

Al blinked, surprised. She'd been talking to the Doctor already. But he knew how much the Doctor tended to say—slim to nil, no matter how much he rambled on. Just enough to confuse her and stir up her curiosity, even if she did ask the right questions. So Beeks couldn't know much. Which meant that she probably wanted to talk to him about the Doctor rather than about Sam or his relationship with Tina or the fact that he should talk about his concerns and not bury them, yadda yadda yadda. And the fact that he hadn't enlightened her on the Doctor's last visit. He'd spent a month burying the truth behind all sorts of red tape, and he didn't fancy sifting through all that paperwork. The conversation wouldn't be a pleasant one, no matter how much Beeks would try to make it so.

"Negative, Dr. Beeks," Ziggy replied smoothly.

"I suppose that would be too easy," Beeks agreed reluctantly. "If we could do that with just anyone, we'd have no trouble giving the officials their proof." She allowed her displeasure to show for a moment before carefully schooling her features again. "Doctor," she asked, addressing their leapee, "was I right in my interpretation of you as a scientist?"

"Well…sort of." The Doctor offered her a weak grin. "I have lots of experience in this field, actually." He waved a hand around him. "Plenty. This is all a bit..._elementary_, really, if I'm honest. And I like to be honest. So to answer your next question, yes. I am a time traveller. And that's the heart of our trouble. Well, my trouble. Only your trouble if we can't splice together those parallels in time."

"Whaddaya mean, splice together those parallels?" Al asked. "Sam didn't say anything about that."

"No, I don't expect he'd want to tell you, if he knew," the Doctor replied, looking off into space somewhere over Al's shoulder, eyes fixed on a rare blank space of wall next to the doorway. "I didn't even want to tell you. But I'm not sure that it matters, now. You see, I don't know what I've done. I mean, what I'm going to do. But I can bet that, somewhere along the line, I've saved the earth. But now that's all becoming undone. I can't guarantee that I'll make the same decisions now. I'd like to think I'll try." He looked back at Al now. "But I have to watch, and I have to see how things unravel. If they do. I need to watch the ripple, track the cracks. Count them. I'm going to try to patch them, but—" here he waved a hand down at himself "—I'm not exactly fully equipped to do that. I can only do what I can in the here and now. No fixing at the source. Which means that it will keep spreading, weakening. And there're only so many times you can patch something before it changes, just a bit."

"I think that you had better enlighten us on these parallels, Doctor," Al growled. "The Type LXXVI one or whatever you keep going on about."

"A Type LXXVI parallel isn't long-lived," the Doctor finally divulged, not meeting their eyes, instead staring over Al's shoulder again. "Something's gone wrong, and it will terminate. Plenty of types of parallel termination, and it doesn't matter which kind, usually. I mean, normally, I can let end. Other times, I can just cut it off, let it form a parallel world prematurely. Doesn't usually cause any harm, and if it does, it's not hard to fix. But the parallel world wouldn't be viable, and it would disintegrate into the Void, so to speak. But sometimes, there's something that you need from the original timeline, and you can't just cut it off, because you can't risking losing that. That's when you have to splice the parallels back together. And they have to be the _right_ parallels or it won't last long. Grafting's rarely an option, you see; hardly ever works, even as a nurse graft while you get your affairs in order.

"But, pinpointing those parallels isn't as easy as you'd think. Every second, there are thousands of parallels being created. Millions. Every decision, another parallel. Another path. And they aren't isolated, oh, no. They crisscross each other. Interlocking decisions. Some converge with one another and remain that way, and some converge in some areas and diverge in others. But just because a parallel exists doesn't mean a parallel world will form. It doesn't, usually, though that's not to say that there aren't billions upon billions of parallel worlds out there. And it doesn't mean that that parallel wouldn't have been viable, just that the decision, in the long run, really wasn't important. That parallel will always converge with the initial timeline again, none the worse for the wear. Essentially, all that happens there is the timeline shifting around the decision, otherwise unchanged."

"Doctor, get to the point," Al ordered, his voice low. "What happens if that parallel isn't spliced in time?"

"A Type LXXVI parallel termination is absolute," the Doctor answered softly, shifting his gaze to look at Al. "Anything on it will be lost." He looked back at the doorway. "And I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry. But that will include Sam."

Al heard a choked sob, and he turned to see Donna. She sagged in the doorway, the first tears that escaped trapping a stray dark lock of hair against her cheek. The Doctor hadn't been talking to the wall. He'd been talking to her the entire time. Telling her, in no uncertain words, that her husband was going to die, and she wouldn't be able to do so much as bury the body, let alone see him alive one last time.

Al felt the anger rise in his chest. The Doctor had no right to break her heart, not in that way, not right then, not without definite proof. They hadn't even run any scenarios by Ziggy. He couldn't know, not for certain. He'd said it wasn't fixed. If it wasn't fixed, it was in flux. And if it was in flux, it could be changed. The Doctor had told him that last time, more or less, and Al had been around Sam long enough to vaguely follow what the Doctor had been saying, then.

Verbeena moved to comfort Donna. She didn't say anything; she just wrapped her arms around her and let her colleague, her friend, cry. Al knew her well enough to know that she'd shed her own tears later. He respected her for that. Verbeena Beeks was a strong woman, and she could anchor Donna now that the Doctor had set her adrift.

"You can't know that," Al stated hollowly. "You can't know that that will happen."

"That's what will happen if the parallels aren't spliced," the Doctor rejoined bitterly.

"And what does that have to do with your splintering?" Al shot back, still not tearing his eyes from his friends.

"You wouldn't understand."

Now Al turned to look at the Doctor. "Try me."

"I've been simplifying my explanations as it is," the Doctor explained, his voice still sombre, his eyes still sad, his expression still saying that he wished he could do something but he just _couldn't_. It was the same look Al had seen when he'd asked the Doctor to fix the retrieval system last time. He'd been refused that time, and he'd accepted it, but this time he wouldn't back down. He needed to know.

The Doctor must have recognized and accepted this, for he continued, "But, think of it like this. There are more than a million, billion timelines out there. Some cross. Some don't. When I was saying timeline before, I didn't exactly mean a timeline. Well, I did, but it's broader than that. A timeline for this reality, not just a personal timeline. It's the timeline for this reality that's split into parallels. And these parallels are made up of, oh, _so_ many threads—and so many strings in every thread. Personal timelines. They're personal timelines. All intertwined, woven together to create the larger timeline. Some touch each other. Some don't. They end and they begin, but the fabric they form is never broken. Right now, that fabric is more like a square on a patchwork quilt. It encompasses so much, but it's part of something larger. But that quilt, it has a flipside. A mirror image. It's reversible. Except…sometimes it's not, in certain places. It can't be; it's all cobbled together, bits and pieces of times and realities. But sometimes, if there's a loose thread, and you pull it out…." The Doctor sighed. "You can unravel more than you intend."

"So what's splintering, exactly?" Al demanded, raising his voice. "Snapping that thread?"

"To keep to the same analogy," the Doctor began, "yes. To a point. Yanking that thread out, snapping it, weakens the overall timeline. You snap that thread, and it frays, and it snarls other timelines, other events. You can't do it without affecting something else. Another life, perhaps. Maggie Dawson for Tom Beckett, for instance." The Doctor stopped. When Al opened his mouth to retaliate, he added, "Only with me, it'll be worse. Because I have touched so many lives, Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci. More than you can imagine. I don't know how many more I'll touch between now and then, but I reckon it's a fair bit, and removing that thread from the pattern will be like taking apart a seam. Not just one seam, all in a line. There'll be holes over the entire quilt, because I don't stay in one time, on one world. I travel. So it'll be messy."

Al glared at the Doctor, and the room was silent for a few moments, save for the electronic hum in the background. To Al's surprise, Gooshie broke the suffocating silence. "Then…then we'll have to ensure that the parallels are spliced," he declared, albeit shakily and with less confidence than Al would have hoped. Even so, he had to credit him for trying to take charge. Although that was _his_ job, not Gooshie's. Still, Verbeena's calm, assertive presence was dealing with Donna, and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure he could have spoken right then without snapping at the Doctor.

A small smile twitched at the corners of the Doctor's mouth, but then he seemed to remember something, and it died. "Precisely what I'd say," he announced, with more gusto than he ought to, Al thought, looking as he did. "Let's get to it, shall we?" He offered them a grin, but it didn't reach his eyes, and Al knew it was all a show.

But he couldn't say something, not now. Not in front of Gooshie, who was trying so hard to remain optimistic. He was chattering away to Ziggy now, doing what he could, doing what he knew best. Al looked across to Donna and Verbeena. The latter caught his eye, mouthing that she'd speak with him later. He nodded in return. Donna was drying her tears, clinging to the Doctor's latest words like a lifeline to pull her back to shore. Al couldn't cut it, couldn't throw her back out to sea by pointing out that the Doctor wasn't telling them something. The Doctor wasn't easy to read, and Al found it difficult even now, but he knew one thing with absolute clarity.

The Doctor was keeping his silence in an attempt to protect them, to spare them. He'd known what his words were doing to Donna as he'd said them, but he hadn't curtailed them, not then, because they'd needed to be said. But he'd made the choice not to tell them everything. He hadn't mentioned the pocket. He'd only said a bit about the parallels. He hadn't elaborated much on the splintering, either. He'd given them some information, but not all of it, and Al could only hope that it was enough, as the Doctor had obviously judged it to be. The time would come when he'd have to finish his speech. Al wouldn't even have to force him to do it. He'd have to tell them, all of them, whatever he had left out.

Al could only hope that it wasn't something that would forever tear apart the family they'd become at the Project.

* * *

A/N: So, hopefully the explanations weren't terribly tedious, and hopefully some of them make sense, or at least partially make sense. But, I tried to throw out enough questions to keep you all interested and guessing. It's much more fun that way. Thanks to those who review—I certainly appreciate it!


	9. Chapter 9

Sam looked up when he heard the door open, expecting to see Martha back to remind him of something; she'd only left a few minutes before. Instead, it was the Doctor. And despite the grin he offered Sam, he looked ill. When Sam expressed his concern, however, the Doctor waved it off. "Me? Nah. I'm fine. Right as rain."

"Doctor—"

"Where's Martha gone off to, then?" the Doctor asked, interrupting Sam.

"She went to the library to see if she could find anything to help. She said she knew her way around it quite well."

"Really? Impressive." The Doctor looked thoughtful. "Which library is that, then?"

Sam started. "Which library?"

"Well, you don't expect me to only have one," the Doctor replied, looking surprised by the very thought. "I do love a good book." He paused. "Though, if says she knows her way around it well, I'm tempted to believe it's one of the smaller ones, because I've a few libraries on hand that even _I_ lose books in. Granted, that may be due to my filing system. And the fact that I sometimes don't leave books in the library. Sometimes I sort a few of my favourites under author, in one of my trunks. Like C for Christie, Agatha. Splendid woman. She's astounding, you know. Absolutely brilliant, that Agatha. Amazingly astute. And observant. And resilient. And not too bad at solving a good mystery herself, though I expect she prefers to pen them. She fooled me once, you know. And, oh, it was a good once." He grinned at the memory. "But, yes," he continued, recovering, "point at hand. I think I know which library Martha's in. Last time I saw it, it wasn't that far away from the wardrobe room, and I expect Martha would have turned it up in her explorations. Besides, I don't think it's been moved lately." He paused again. "Have you told her yet?"

"Yes," Sam admitted, "but not about you."

"Good, good." The Doctor started fiddling with the screen on the console, causing the entire screen to become covered with circles. He stared at it, frowning slightly.

"Doctor," Sam started again, "perhaps you ought to go to the other parallel anyhow. If this is going to terminate, and we can't stop it, you shouldn't be here."

"Oh, we'll stop it," the Doctor said. "Don't you worry. Besides, I'm not about to leave."

"You aren't well, no matter what you say," Sam insisted. "You can't run yourself ragged here, trying to fix something that's gone wrong. It's bound to be something I can do, or I wouldn't be here."

"Yeah, about that," the Doctor began hesitantly, turning to look at Sam. "I'm not that convinced that you _are_ supposed to be here. That this is where you were intended to leap, I mean. I don't really think you were supposed to land here any more than Martha and I were. Which makes it my problem, not yours. So I'm not leaving."

"But—"

"Sam, I'm sorry, I really am, and I promise I'll make sure you leap out of here in one piece. I don't know how much I can do from here, but I'll make sure that it's enough."

"Doctor, you ca—"

"Sam, listen to me. If I travel in the Vortex, I'm going to shatter. As long as I'm splintering, I'm stuck right here, right now. So I might as well do what I can." He looked determined, but Sam could see weariness in his face as well.

"Can you stop the splintering?" Sam finally asked, worried by what the final toll would be if the Doctor looked this ill in the initial stages.

The Doctor sighed. "If I can repair all this business with the parallels," he answered, waving a hand around at him, "it should stop the splintering in its tracks."

"Should?" Sam repeated doubtfully.

"Theoretically," the Doctor admitted. "Don't exactly have experience with splintering myself, until now. Heard it's a nasty process. I take care to avoid it."

"So once you stop it, you'll be back to normal?"

The Doctor was quiet for a while. When he finally replied, he only said, "No."

Sam looked at him, horrified. "Then what—? How can you—? Isn't there _anything_—?"

"Sam, listen to me!" The Doctor's voice was soft, but it still had a sharp edge to it—one that was something of desperation, Sam thought. "I don't know if I'm going to get through this, but if we can splice the parallels together, there's a chance that I will. If I can guide events along a similar path, leaving everything but this unchanged, then I'll be able to compensate. There are things that I can do, and if I'm right, they should suffice. But I won't be able to do that if we don't splice the parallels together before too many more cracks appear. It'll be difficult for me to think straight then, and I won't be able to do what I need to in order to splice them together, and if I can't do that, I won't buy myself the time I need to make sure the splintering doesn't go any further than it has. And if it's too late by the time we finish our mending—" He broke off, and his face became expressionless. "Well, I've known it was coming. Knowing just isn't making it any easier."

The Doctor took a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "I've been tracing the parallels back to their dividing point. I needed to know what caused the division to know how to fix it." He sighed. "Seems fitting that I was the one who caused it, doesn't it? Me, always interfering. Meddler, that's me. And all I was trying to do was help. Usually I'm a bit more careful than that, but I thought I'd still managed to divert the timeline from that path, what with all the follow up I've been doing. I just didn't think to look years later. I mean, the chances that that recording would've been commandeered years after being archived…. Still. Done now."

"What recording?" Sam asked, suddenly wondering just how entwined the Doctor had become in his life in their last encounter. Surely he couldn't mean….

"One of you," the Doctor answered. "I expect you remember what I'm talking about, judging by the look on your face. Not that I approve of Dr. Hardy's methods, or of Major Irwin Meadows's reasons, but I only took it from them because I didn't want you to leave too many traces. Well, take is a bit strong of a word. I simply persuaded them to release it to me. But, don't you worry, Al's got it now, safe and sound, so there aren't any traces of you lying about in your past telling anyone who listens about your time travel experiment." He frowned. "No undoing that, but it should mean that all I have to do is go back and give them a little nudge in the right direction when they go about reverse engineering that handlink of yours."

Sam just stared at him, shocked. He knew, deep down, who the Doctor meant by 'them'. And he couldn't help but be horrified to think that the Doctor would take a willing part in starting that, knowing how it would end up. "You're saying that you—?"

"I'm sorry, Sam. I thought if they didn't have all your information, it would be easier when they finally caught up to you. I couldn't change how things were supposed to play out—balance and all—but I'd thought that I could make the final transition smoother, so to speak." He shrugged apologetically. "One of the rare times that I was wrong." He pulled a face then, adding, "Though, I have to say, I don't need to spend much time in this pocket in the parallel to realize that it wouldn't be that different without someone leaping around wronging rights. You humans have a nasty habit of gravitating towards death and destruction and despair all on your own." He paused, considering. "But to be fair, you're also remarkable at recovering. And sometimes it spurs you lot on to great things."

"But you said I was an anomaly on this parallel," Sam said suddenly. "How can I be an anomaly if the Project still exists here?"

The Doctor looked at him for a long moment. "Balance," he finally said. "Me, I try to do good, and I've my fair share of enemies. But even if I'm gone, someone else will step up to fight them. Sometimes at the cost of their own lives." He was silent for a few seconds before continuing, "This parallel, Sam—it's not about the project Alia became involved in. Originally, yes, they were able to devise their experiment by combining the information from the recording and the handlink and a few other clues you probably don't even realize you've left. Add a dash of evil genius, and you've got something that most anyone would look at and think is terrible. That's what happened on this parallel. But me, I came along and moved the recording out of their reach. They didn't find it."

"So they couldn't use it to create their project?" Sam deduced, shaking his head. "That can't be right. I did meet Alia, more than once; you can't tell me I've been leaping on this parallel instead of my own."

"Hear me out," the Doctor stated. "Let me explain this. Properly. You were leaping on your own parallel. And they knew it. Thing is, they didn't know there were two parallels. They were blinded to the very possibility. They were desperate to find you, Sam Beckett. And, eventually, they did. Only Alia had a conscience, didn't she? So things didn't go exactly according to plan, that first time through. You survived." He stopped for a moment. "You did exist on this parallel once, Sam. You weren't always an anomaly. You see, it comes down to resource allocation. In this parallel, Project Quantum Leap spent time and money searching history for that recording. And as good as Ziggy is, well, she wasn't quite good enough. In your parallel, the resources that would have been put towards the search for the recording were diverted, and when it came down to it, at that critical point, sufficient research had been done to snap Alia's connection with her project and link her into yours, and later get her out of harm's way to start again. But in this parallel, when the two of you tried to leap together…." The Doctor trailed off. "At Project Quantum Leap, they didn't dare send someone else off leaping to look for you without making sure the retrieval system worked. But they had Al searching for weeks, practically living in the Imaging Chamber, desperate to find you. And then the funding was cut, and they couldn't raise enough to continue their efforts." His voice darkened as he continued, "But when Alia was lost, they sent Zoey out."

"But things aren't that different on this parallel than they are on mine," Sam finally pointed out.

"We're in a pocket here," the Doctor reminded him. "A continuous enantiomeric pocket. Mirrors the other parallel in some ways, but doesn't really belong on this one. Which is why the pocket was created in the first place, really. Like an intron region that'll loop to be spliced out during RNA processing," the Doctor added, harking back to their earlier comparison. "This portion hasn't been affected by Zoey's unbalanced leaping, not like the rest of this parallel, where the changes are beginning to accumulate. The rest, well, as I've said—it's going to terminate."

"But you haven't said how I could have met Alia on _my_ parallel when they couldn't form their own time travel experiment without my recording." Sam thought for a moment. "Unless you mean to say we jumped parallels, from this one to that one?"

The Doctor looked impressed. "Brilliant thought," he praised, looking pleased, "but sadly not the truth. You see, I never said that they _couldn't_ develop their experiment without the recording."

"You implied it. Otherwise, why would you have to help them conceive the idea from the handlink?"

"No, no. Sam, you're still thinking that the parallels were created around the other project. That's not true. In each parallel, both projects existed at some point in time. The difference is whether or not the recording was available when the other experiment was devised," the Doctor informed him. "In your parallel, they still formed their project. Only…." He hesitated, and after a moment closed his eyes. "They didn't know about you, not even Lothos. Oh, they knew that there had to be _someone_ out there, but for all they knew, it was still their project—which perhaps spurred them onto their ultimate success, seeing as it could have been a sign of their accomplishment. I mean, you lot didn't stick to one type of handlink, did you? No, it evolved." The Doctor opened his eyes. "Thing is, Sam, what needs to be done…already has been done. From your perspective. Which is why I didn't spot it before."

"What?"

"Initially, you see, the other project, it…. Well, it followed a few more _unconventional_ paths when designing and recruiting. Not that they ever really followed all the rules and regulations you did. Just…they were a bit more desperate the first time around. And the desperation made them more aggressive. And, for them, it allowed them to...cultivate the results they wanted. I don't think you'd appreciate the details." The Doctor paused, then resumed his explanation, saying, "But, in terms of the handlink, I didn't mean that I'd _help_ them figure it out. Just…nudge them in the right direction. The _right_ direction. That is, _away_ from the direction they were headed in, originally. I mean, sure, they'd still figure it out, but if they find the basics of what they need to know quickly enough, they are more liable to overlook other, seemingly inconsequential, factors. Little things, nothing major." He blew out a breath. "But enough to…tweak things in your favour. Later, I mean. And a quick visit with Alia would be in order, just to show her that she _does_ have the strength to stand up to them—strength you can renew her faith in, so she can trust you. Bit tricky, but I expect I could get her alone." After a brief pause, he said, "You see, Sam, things…changed. You don't remember what originally happened, in your own parallel. You remember what should happen. After the splicing."

"But if what I remember is a product of the splicing, doesn't that mean it's already been done?"

"From your perspective," the Doctor repeated. "But not from mine. Meaning, of course, that I have to do it."

"But it also means you succeeded," Sam pointed out, "or it wouldn't be what I recall."

"Sam, before you leap into a situation to change something, everyone remembers the original history. From a point further into the past, that original history is only projected. From my perspective, what you remember is simply projected—something I would have done, had something else not changed. Now that I'm splintering, your memories are nothing more than a guideline for me. So what you recall isn't going to stand if I can't splice these parallels together. And because I'm splintering, I can't go back, meaning I can't splice them, which is why we're still on two separate parallels now." He sighed. "There is a way to forcibly splice them together, and believe me, I've explored that option, but even if I break few dozen rules allowing me—and the other me—to do that, it probably wouldn't hold, given my deteriorating state. I mean, piece of cake otherwise, by comparison, but I'm a bit too far along now, I think, given, well…." He stopped. "Still. Wouldn't hurt if I could talk to myself. You ought to go and see Al. Tell him to get the other me working on it. Might take a bit longer, using your tools, but between the two of us, we should be able to rig it up. And, really, they'll be wondering where you are, anyway. And they might have found something out. Isn't it best to let them have their say?"

Realizing he wouldn't win an argument with the Doctor, Sam left the TARDIS, preoccupied with trying to digest what the Doctor had told him and coming up with a solution to the problems they faced. There had to be something else, something the Doctor had missed. He'd leaped in here, after all, and no matter what the Doctor said, he was convinced that there _was_ a reason for it.

* * *

A/N: So, for those of you who would like that run by them again, here it is:

_**The Project's parallel:**_ reflects the effects of the splicing—in other words, what we know from the series; the Doctor did not go into much other detail about it.

_**The other parallel, where the Doctor and Sam are now:**_ when Sam and Alia met up and eventually leaped together, their respective Projects lost track of them. Project Quantum Leap was shut down, due to lack of funding, but Zoey started leaping, taking over where Alia left off. Because she's been doing it for a sight longer than the Doctor had initially thought, the parallels no longer reflect each other as much as they might have. But, being caught in the pocket, things outside look much the same to Sam and the Doctor, because the pocket mirrors the other parallel.

If anyone is still confused, drop me a note and I'll see if I can explain it any better. In the meantime, thanks to those who have reviewed.


	10. Chapter 10

Al was relieved when Ziggy informed him that she had located Sam and would be able to establish a lock on him. Less than three minutes later, he was in the Imaging Chamber, handlink and cigar in hand, surrounded by holograms—including Sam's. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, however, Sam spotted him.

"Al," he started. "This entire leap is driving me crazy! I finally start to figure something out, and then the Doctor tells me something else, and…." He threw up his arms in frustration, pacing a few steps before stopping to look at Al. "I don't know what to do, Al. And I don't think we've got much time. Something's happening to the Doctor, and he keeps telling me he's all right, but I know he's not. It's frustrating." He sighed. "I don't suppose Ziggy has come up with anything?"

"She doesn't have enough information to project a scenario," Al replied. "We didn't get much last time, and of what we did get, half of it didn't make sense. But even if you do tell us everything, I can't make any promises. We have to enter anything about the Doctor manually, and Gooshie told me the minute anything remotely related comes up, the entire report he's working on becomes a temporary file. And Tina hasn't surfaced, so we're short-handed. I'd have a talk with her, but I'd be too tempted to join her." He smiled at the thought. "We'd be snug as two bugs in a rug and we might be able to dance a certa—"

"Al!"

Al took a puff of his cigar. "The Doctor's not making much sense at our end, either. He won't tell us everything we need to know, and he refuses to undo whatever the other Doctor did to Ziggy. But I—" The handlink squawked, and he looked at it. He frowned. "Sam, the Doctor wants to come into the Imaging Chamber with me. Says he rigged something up so you two could communicate. How he can do _that_ without it interfering with that block on Ziggy is beyond me. But, look, before he bursts his way in here, why don't you tell me what you've found out and we'll feed it into Ziggy?"

Sam explained the situation—careful not to make any assumptions, Al noted—and was looking worried by the time he'd finished. "And the Doctor says he wants to talk to himself, too," he added. "Thinks they can come up with something."

"But all he's told you about why you're here is that you're really not supposed to be here at all?" Al repeated incredulously. "Sam, you don't believe him, do you? This entire situation is completely caca, and neither of the Doctors are doing anything to convince me that they aren't loony tunes!"

"But, Al, he's been right about almost everything else—what if he's right about this, too? How am I supposed to leap when we don't even know what I'm here to do?"

"We'll figure it out, Sam," Al told him. "Gooshie's feeding the data into Ziggy now."

"But it's all theoretical," Sam argued. "We aren't dealing with hard facts."

"Depends who you ask, I think," Al muttered. "Look, I—" The handlink squawked again, three times in quick succession, and he looked down at it. Rolling his eyes, he said, "Wait here. I'll just be a minute or two. Seems I need to explain to the Doctor our rules, judging by how he's broken some code and gained direct access into the handlink." He winced as it squawked again. "Why I even let him _near_ Ziggy…." Without waiting for a response from Sam, he punched the appropriate buttons to open the door to the Imaging Chamber and left, closing it behind him.

When he entered the Control Room, the Doctor was grinning at him inanely. "Ready?" he asked cheerily. "I've got it all fixed up."

Al turned his gaze to Gooshie, who looked more than a bit distressed as he tried to stutter out an excuse. "Admiral, he—I—when the—"

"What he means to say," the Doctor cut in, "was that I managed to isolate the audio link that allowed Katie McBain to speak to Sam. And all we need is skin-to-skin contact for a visual, so we're set; all I needed to do was extrapolate the signal and strengthen it, relaying it through a secondary transmitter—your handlink—and I'll be able to see what's going on as surely as Sam can see me."

"Ziggy—"

"The audio connection is stable, Admiral, but was uniquely modified to the Doctor's voice pattern and cannot be applied to others. The visual relay connection is temporary and subject to breakage that will not be easily repaired. I estimate it will last no more than twenty-six point two minutes."

"It's a precaution," the Doctor explained, not even flinching under Al's steel gaze. "I think we're in enough of a mess as it is without me changing things on you even further, wouldn't you agree?"

"Ziggy, when do you think you'll be able to project a reason for Sam's leaping in?"

There was silence. Then, "Without the availability of additional data, a likely scenario cannot be determined prior to the estimated termination of the parallel."

"Oh?" Al took another puff of his cigar. "When's that, then?"

"At the current rate of deterioration, I estimate termination will occur in three point six hours."

"_What_? Then how can we slow the rate that that thing's going to unravel?"

"There is insufficient data, Admiral."

"And it's not unravel," the Doctor corrected. "It'll just stop. _Unravel_ would imply that it—"

"I didn't ask you," Al snapped, losing his temper. He took a few deep breaths before starting again, giving himself time to reign in his anger. "Gooshie, feed every single word you hear into Ziggy. Doctor, with me. We need to talk to Sam."

* * *

"Sam, I couldn't find…." Martha trailed off when she caught sight of him. He looked positively ill—shoulders hunched in pain over the console, face pale but still glistening with sweat, knuckles white on hands pulled into tight fists. "Sam?" she called again, uncertainly. "Sam, what happened?"

She watched the fingers uncurl and flex, the face relax. He turned to her and offered her a grin. "Why, Martha Jones," he greeted in a jovial voice, "back from the library already, are you?"

Bits of the Doctor, he'd said. Quite a bit, if he could mask his pain that easily. Because she could see no trace of it now, except in his eyes, barring the still-pale face. "I couldn't find anything relevant," she answered, watching him carefully. "Wherever the Doctor keeps his books on quantum physics, it's not there."

"No, I don't expect it is," he replied. "Not exactly light reading, is it, for you lot? I'd keep it in a separate library, myself. Narrows the searches down. I don't expect you've found that one yet?"

"I'd said I only knew of one library," Martha answered, eyes narrowing slightly. "I mean, sure, the Doctor probably has more tucked away, but that's not the point. You're not well, are you?"

"Ah, don't mind me," Sam said, waving the question away just like the Doctor would. "I'm all right."

"Sam—"

"Just some temporal feedback," he admitted. "Nothing serious. I expect being a time traveller who's leaped into a time traveller is catching up with me." He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. "It'll pass."

"Let me have a look at you," Martha insisted. "Come on, sit down."

"That's not necessary," Sam insisted. "I'll be fine. Right as rain in a minute or two, I expect." He smiled at her encouragingly, trying to get her to believe him, and she almost did—until she saw the smile slip, just for a second, into a grimace.

"Sit," she ordered, pointing to the pilot's seat. "Now." She reached to grab his arm, but he danced out her way, twisting around to the other side of the console before she could blink. "Oh, come on," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "You put up with it last time."

"And that should still stand as proof enough that I'm well, shouldn't it?" Sam countered. "Nothing wrong with me then, was there?"

"Maybe not, but something's clearly changed," Martha retorted.

"Oh, I expect once the splicing's through, things will come together as they should."

"Yeah?" Martha looked at him sceptically. "And how would you know that?"

"I had a…bit of a…visit."

"With Al, you mean."

Sam brightened. "Yes! Only, had to slip out of the TARDIS to do that. He can't reach me in here. Primitive technology." He must have seen her face, because he quickly added, "I mean, compared to this." He waved an arm around him. "Cutting edge for the late twentieth century, sure, but it can't compare to this."

"I'd still like to have a look at you."

"Martha, I'm fine," he said. "I've been doing this for, oh, I dunno, five years or so now. Least, I think it's been five years. It's a bit hard to keep track. But last time I was at the Project, it was 1999. Which would make it _almost_ five years. So I have some experience with this."

"With leaping into other time travellers?" Martha folded her arms, not buying it for a minute.

"Well, not that, _exactly_," he confessed. "But I've leaped into a chimpanzee."

"You _what_?"

"That didn't go as planned, actually," Sam told her, looking off to one side in thought. "I was supposed to make sure Bobo was accepted into the space program, but failed that and Bobo ended up with Dr. Leslie Ashton, who built a sanctuary for orphaned and ex-research chimps." He looked back at Martha, who was still staring at him. "It's one of the clearer leaps," he defended. "I don't remember everything from them. Just pieces. And frankly, I'm glad I don't remember what caterpillars taste like." He made a face. "Remember it was nasty, though." He paused, then added, "But, you see, it's the Swiss-cheese effect. I've got holes in my memory. If you were to ask me something from my own time, or a detail about a previous leap, I might not even be able to tell you the answer. I don't have any control over what I remember and what I don't."

"But…then how can you—?"

"It's not easy," Sam admitted. "I mean, there was a time I didn't remember my own last name, let alone my brother. But I expect it's like your travels with the Doctor."

"What?" Martha uncrossed her arms and walked around to face him, and he didn't move away. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I never know where I'm going to end up," Sam replied simply. "And half the time, it's dangerous. I've leaped in to hear gunshots less than two minutes later. One time I even leaped in holding the gun. I've nearly been killed, on some leaps. But the thing is, so have you, haven't you? You've faced dangers and survived." He studied her face. "Yes, you must have. And not just on Earth, I'd reckon."

Martha felt her mouth twitch into a smile. "You're right," she acknowledged. "But I still love it."

"And I love what I do," he told her. "Really. And I know how much good I'm doing. It's just…I want to go home."

"Can't you?"

Sam shook his head. "The retrieval system doesn't work. They've modified it, but…." He trailed off.

"That's terrible!" Martha exclaimed. "Isn't there anything anyone can do?" He shook his head again. "What about the Doctor?" she asked suddenly. "Can't he fix it if he's there?"

Sam looked startled. "Well." He stopped. "You know, I'm not sure." He stopped again. "He probably could. Well, no probably about it, not really. He could. Perfectly capable, I imagine. He's brilliant, after all. A genius. Only…I don't think he would. I mean, he'd want to; he'd really, really want to. Just…he couldn't, not in good conscience. Sometimes meddling…isn't worth it. The consequences, I mean. Change something now, and look at the potential that's lost in the future. And with Sam—me," he hastily corrected. "Sorry, think I was tuning into the Doctor again. But with me, I can do so much on my leaps, changing so many things for the better. If the Doctor fixes the retrieval system, he might change all that."

"But wouldn't it just give you a chance to regulate your leaps?" Martha asked. "So that you aren't at it constantly?"

Sam opened his mouth, and looked like he was reconsidering his answer. "Well—yes," he finally agreed. "Theoretically."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Theoretically," he said again.

"But why wouldn't it be?"

Sam sighed. "It's just a feeling, that's all. But that fear doesn't override the longing to go home. You will, Martha. The Doctor will keep you safe, and he'll make sure you get home. He just…can't do the same for me."

"We can take you to visit, at least," Martha suggested. "In the TARDIS."

"I…don't think that would be a very good idea," Sam said hastily. "Colliding timelines; too much of a risk of knotting them, gnarling them into something that shouldn't be. Because that…would take a while to sort out. Longer than this, even. And, frankly, after this last mess, I don't think I should take the chance."

"We could ask," Martha suggested.

"Who can we ask?" Sam shook his head. "The Doctor's back at the Project, and he's not coming back until I leap out of here. You'd be hard pressed to find an exception to that." He stopped suddenly. "Unless…_nah_. But…no, would it?"

"What?"

He seemed to remember she was there. "Well, I thought Al might be able to talk him into helping us target my next leap, but I don't think he'd agree to that any more than he'd help us fix the retrieval system. If we sent someone _else_ into the chamber, we could probably target it, but I'm already leaping."

"There's always a chance you'll figure it out eventually," Martha reminded him. "Isn't there?"

"Oh, of _course_ there is, Martha Jones," he exclaimed, the forlorn look on his face fading away as he grinned at her. "And I expect I'll be betting on that." Martha was still frowning at him, so he added, "Besides, if you were going to try to take me back home, you'd have to find me, and when you found me, you'd have to take me out of whatever leap I was in, disrupting whatever I was there to do, and possibly ruining my chances of putting it right, compromising my ability to leap out. So it wouldn't work."

"You've given this some thought, haven't you?"

"Plenty." And she knew that expression of the Doctor's—it was the one that meant he wasn't about to pursue the topic any more, no matter what she tried saying. They stood in silence for a few moments, and then Sam said, "I ought to go and see if I can contact Al again."

"And I should wait here?" Martha guessed.

"You wouldn't make any sense of one half of a conversation," he reminded her. "And I don't think I have time to repeat everything. Tell you what, though. If I find anything out, you'll be the first person I tell." He smiled at her, and slipped out of the TARDIS before she could protest.

It was only once he was gone that she realized he'd distracted her from her earlier concerns.

* * *

Sam jumped when Al called out his name. He turned around, spotting both Al and the Doctor, the latter of whom grinned at him and waved. "Did you manage it?" Sam asked, trying to get used to the fact that the Doctor he saw as a hologram in front of him had never met him before. It helped that the Doctor was still clad in white, rather than the suit Sam now wore.

"Oh, piece of cake," the Doctor said, waving the idea away with his right hand—his left was clutching Al's to maintain visual contact. "But we don't really have time to discuss that, I think."

Sam looked at Al, who grudgingly agreed. "Ziggy still doesn't have enough information to project why you're here," he told Sam.

"What did she say?" Al looked distinctly uncomfortable now, and even the Doctor kept his mouth tightly shut. "Tell me, Al," Sam prompted.

"She says that unless things change, you've got three point six hours."

"Three hours, thirty-six minutes," the Doctor added helpfully. "Well, thirty-three now."

"Three point six hours until _what_, exactly?" Sam read the look on Al's face. "Oh, no, you're not telling me—? Al, how am I supposed to get out of this? What happens if I don't?"

"You will," Al told him. "We'll figure it out. That's what we're doing now."

"Sam," the Doctor began, "I need you to tell me what I've done on this end. I need to know what you've found out. I can't depend on Ziggy's readings, not for this."

"He wanted to talk to you about that," Sam said. "And a few other things, I expect. But are you certain you don't know why I leaped in here?"

"I don't like this any more than you, Sam." Al frowned as he looked at the handlink. "We're not even picking anything up any more. What the hell did you do?" The last question was addressed to the Doctor, who looked suitably sheepish.

"It won't last," he said, instead of explaining himself. "Once the visual's broken, you'll be able to collect readings again. But it's not as essential as you think, not with this leap. Everything Ziggy's been picking up has been skewed. I mean, look at this." The Doctor waved his free hand around them. "We're not even properly on the other parallel. That's why Sam's signal's so weak; he's being pulled through to _ours_. Hence the temporal interference you ran into before. Unless you'd care to explain where the TARDISes are?" Sam was silent, so the Doctor continued, "Exactly. Al, let me see the handlink."

"If you think I'm going to let you _near_—"

"Yes, I know, and I know the threats if I damage anything, and from you I'll guess that keelhauling is in the top ten, but I need to shift us back to the other parallel or I'm not going to be able to talk with myself." Balancing on one leg—apparently expecting Al to grab his ankle, which he did with a roll of his eyes—the Doctor snatched the handlink and began fiddling with it, hitting various sequences of buttons before wrenching a panel off the back and poking at the circuitry.

"Now, Sam," the Doctor started, still playing around with the handlink, "have you happened to notice anything, well, markedly different in my behaviour? The me who's been with you, I mean." He looked up briefly. "How much have I been telling you, exactly?"

"You want to know what the effects are on him now that I've changed his timeline," Sam supposed gloomily.

"Enough, I see," the Doctor noted, his eyes lingering on Sam's face. "Yes, has the splintering been showing any effects so far?"

"A bit," Sam admitted. "He looks ill, but I don't know anything beyond that."

"So no glimpses or—?" Sam was shaking his head, and the Doctor looked relieved. "Good, good. None of the cracks have split yet if he isn't pulling on my new knowledge. That's good. Really good, actually." He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. "I thought it would be worse than that. Never been happier to be wrong in my life." He returned his attention the handlink, and, after a minute, snapped the back panel back on and hit a few buttons on the front. His finger hovered above one last one and he grinned at them. "Ready? Might give us a bit of a jolt, could be a smidgen disorienting if you're not prepared. _Allons-y_!" He hit the button, and immediately he and Al began flickering in and out.

Sam saw Al yank the handlink out of the Doctor's hands—causing the Doctor to momentarily blink out of sight, until he regained his balance and reached for Al's hand again—and scrutinize it, frowning. Al's words were garbled, but he was clearly less than pleased. But Sam noticed, looking around, that he _was_ back on the other parallel. He'd noticed it the first time, when he'd been slipping in and out, but with everything else, he'd had to push it to the back of his mind—he hadn't thought asking the Doctor questions that didn't directly pertain to the situation would have been practical at that time.

Behind him, he heard a high-pitched whine pierce through the crackling conversation, and he saw the Doctor, sonic screwdriver in hand. "I made it, I see," he said as the holograms stabilized. He thumbed the device off before pocketing it.

The other Doctor was inspecting him carefully, his expression grim. "You didn't have to adjust your brainwave patterns."

"Nah," the second Doctor replied in a light voice. "Didn't need the headache." But his expression fell to match his counterpart's. He glanced at Al and then at Sam before focussing on his other self. "How long do we have?" he asked.

"I had to short one connection out," the Doctor admitted, "so I'd say seventeen minutes, tops. Probably fifteen seconds less."

"Right." The second Doctor frowned, and turned back to Sam. "Martha's waiting in the TARDIS, expecting an update on whatever Al could tell you. Go, talk to her. Distract her. Make sure she doesn't come out to see me."

"But—"

"You can make your excuses and come back out after, but, trust me, when my companions are impatient, or worried, or curious, they tend to wander off, and I don't need her wandering out here now." Without waiting for Sam to say anything, he turned back to the other Doctor and started jabbering away in another language.

As Sam started to walk away, he could hear Al protesting. "Isn't this going to translate?" he complained, clearly recalling something the Doctor had said to him at some point—perhaps even something from the leap Sam couldn't really remember.

The Doctors cut their dialogue short. "No," one answered simply. "Sorry, but I seem to have a tendency to be rude in this regeneration." And then the conversation resumed, the two of them speaking so quickly that Sam was fairly sure the thread of the conversation would have been hard to follow even if it had been in English.

* * *

A/N: Well, things are getting a little bit worse, aren't they? But that's only to be expected; it's not going to get better on its own. And I'm sure the law of entropy could be worked into an explanation somehow, but I'm also sure that that's entirely unnecessary, so I'll simply thank anyone who takes the time to review.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: I'd just like to take a quick moment to dedicate this chapter to Questfan, who managed to predict where this story was going. At least partially. ;-)

* * *

"That was a short conversation," Martha mused when Sam entered the TARDIS.

"Al didn't have much to say," Sam admitted. "I've given Ziggy all I know, but it hasn't been enough; she still doesn't know why I'm here."

"And who is Ziggy?" Martha asked.

"Parallel-hybrid computer," Sam answered. "But not exempt to breakdowns. Unfortunately, that's not the case this time. If it was, it wouldn't be hard to fix, theoretically; we've enough parts in storage after the last fiasco, according to Al. But now the limiting factor is information, or rather the lack thereof."

"Suppose there's nothing I can do to help, is there?"

"I'm not sure. Anything would probably be helpful, even if it's not entirely relevant, just so Ziggy can process the situation." He looked away for a moment. "I just feel…useless," he finally confessed.

"But you aren't," Martha comforted. "I mean, look at the facts here, yeah?" She smiled encouragingly at him. "You fix things, Sam. Just like the Doctor. You risk your life to do what's right. And besides, you already told me you love it." She kept smiling at him, knowing it was contagious. "And I know you weren't lying. I could see it in your face. Sam, your life is amazing. Do you know how many people on this planet would give their right arm to have a chance to study the past like you are?"

"That was the initial intention of the Project," Sam allowed, facing her with a small, sad smile.

She beamed at him. "I know you want to get home, and some day you will, just like me. I mean, since I've begun travelling with the Doctor, I've only been home once. I never know when I'm going to get back there, and even if I ask, I mean, the TARDIS sometimes, well…."

"Hits turbulence?" Sam offered, a genuine smile on his face now. It didn't last long, however. "You remember your own time, though; not like me. I remember a few things, random things, but nothing important, not really. I want to know what I'm missing. I want to remember everything. And I can't."

"Maybe you will, some day. But it's not like you don't have any contact at all, is it? You've got Al." She held up her cell phone with a grin. "And _I've_ got my mobile." She pocketed it before Sam could ask for any details, continuing, "Thing is, Sam, no matter how far away we go, we're never cut off from our present completely. And you're doing so much good for the world, in little ways. Those are bound to add up. You told me yourself you've touched more lives than you can count. How many of those people would be leading poorer lives if you _hadn't_ touched them? How many of them would have had something so terribly wrong happen that they could never get past it, even as time went on, so they ended up souring the lives of whomever they touched? You're brilliant, Sam, but you've got to be an absolute dunce if you think for one moment that you're useless." Her grin finally faded. "Besides," she added, "if anyone should be feeling useless, it's me."

"Why would you say a thing like that?" Sam asked immediately, concerned. "I'm sure you've helped the Doctor out of one scrape or another."

"Yeah," she agreed. "I have. Not as often as he's saved my skin, but…." She shrugged. "I just…. It's been months, so it's silly, but when the Doctor became John Smith, he asked me why I was there, what my purpose was, why the Doctor let me travel with him. And it's because he's lonely, most of the time." She smirked, adding, "And he _loves_ having someone to talk to. I don't think he even really minds that I don't understand him half the time, just because I'm there for him to explain it to." But her amusement faded as she continued, "Thing is, the Doctor, he doesn't really…. I mean, I couldn't expect…." She stopped. "I just…. I dunno. The Doctor could have ended up travelling with anyone. He travelled with someone before me. And it still hurts him to remember. Sometimes, I swear he looks at me, and he's…." She trailed off, unable to finish her thought.

"Martha, the Doctor wouldn't travel with just anyone," Sam said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "You're special. Ordinary, but…. Brilliant, I believe he'd say."

"But…." Martha took a shuddering breath. She couldn't believe she was about to say this. "Sam, I _love_ him, and he doesn't look at me twice. And every moment of it hurts. I don't want to stop travelling with him, ever, but I know I can't stay forever."

"Then live each moment as if it's your last," Sam advised. "Don't take a second of it for granted. You may love the Doctor, but you deserve someone who loves you in return, who treasures every moment he has with you. You deserve someone who will understand you, and support you, and believe in you, and someone you care for and will gladly do as much for and more in return. You're smart, and you're strong, and you're witty. You're determined and courageous and beautiful and…brilliant, really. And there is someone out there, Martha, on this earth, in your own time, who will realize and appreciate that. You just need to find him. Don't you ever sell yourself short, do you hear me? Promise me that. Promise me you won't settle. Promise me that you'll shelve the concerns of your family over what's proper and what's not and instead help them realize why you're doing what you're doing or why you're with whomever you're with. Can you promise me all that?"

Martha smiled, still blinking back tears. "Yes. I promise."

"I haven't known you very long, Martha Jones," Sam continued, "but I know that you have the will and the ability to do what's right, no matter what life is throwing at you. Even in the most trying of circumstances, even when everyone else has given up, you are the type of person who can continue. And do you know why I think that?"

"Because I'd try to follow the Doctor's example?" Martha mused wryly.

Sam shook his head. "No," he replied gently, "not because you'd follow the Doctor's example. Not because you believe in him and trust him and would try to do what he'd do in a given situation. You'd be able to survive extenuating circumstances because you have the ability to believe in yourself. Remember that. Martha Jones, no matter how ordinary you think you are, no matter how extraordinary you've become since travelling with the Doctor, no matter what trials you're facing, no matter what hurdles you're trying to jump—if you put your mind to it, I believe you could save the world."

She laughed, almost bitterly, still trying to fight off the tears as she was. "Fat chance of that."

"Martha, I don't know what you've been through, travelling with the Doctor, but a change doesn't have to be big or drastic for its effects to be felt. You said I helped people by touching tens of dozens of lives. You can do the same. Just take it one small step at a time, and keep going, no matter how hard the journey becomes. And if you think you've finally reached the end, and the reward seems bittersweet, then you just need to keep going." Martha lost her battle, and the tears started to flow. Sam pulled her into a tight hug. "You have a good character, Martha. Good character, good will, and good judgement. With your compassionate heart and logical mind, people will trust you, and trust _in_ you. And I don't think you'd even be capable of letting them down."

"Thank you, Sam." Her voice was muffled, because her face was still pressed into his shoulder, but she didn't care. She meant it.

* * *

Sam wasn't sure how long it was before he left the TARDIS again. Martha had been the one to excuse herself, saying he was right, and she was being silly, and the Doctor probably _did_ have plenty more libraries in the TARDIS, and if she set out looking for them with the intention of helping the Doctor, then the TARDIS would probably help her find them. Sam hadn't been certain how he should reply to that, because regardless of how often he'd had to think on his feet, he hadn't been faced with another scenario quite like this. Each leap brought its own surprises, of course, but this one was certainly one of the strangest.

He found the Doctor pacing around the exterior of the other TARDIS, muttering to himself. He didn't notice Sam at first, so Sam took the opportunity to study him, mentally comparing him to the other Doctor's healthy image. Among other things, Sam was concerned that the Doctor's face didn't even look flushed, despite the frantic walking round and round the blue police box.

"Doctor?" Sam finally called gently. Finding that he hadn't been heard, he repeated the call, louder this time, and the Doctor stopped abruptly and looked at him.

"I need to get back to the Project," he stated.

"But you said you couldn't—"

"I know what I said." The Doctor ran his hands through his hair. He began pacing again, resuming his old route. "So right now, your way is best. Just nicking it. Might give me a nasty headache, but it won't tear me apart."

"But you can't travel my way," Sam said as the Doctor reappeared from behind his ship a second time. "You're here and…." He trailed off, realizing what the Doctor was thinking.

The Doctor stopped in front of him. "Exactly. Leap him into me. You've leaped leapees into themselves before. You did it with Al. You can do it with me. Bit unconventional, granted, but we can sort it out."

"How much did I tell you?" Sam asked. "Al hasn't even mentioned that since it happened. He's never even said how much he remembers of that."

The Doctor looked like he was going to tear his hair out. "You didn't tell me that," he confessed, slowly removing his hands, though his hair remained in its newest out-of-place position. "You didn't tell me everything about Alia and Zoey, either. Not this me; _I_ only knew bits of it. The _other_ me found it out when he read through the reports of your leaps. And my timeline's fracturing. I can see splinters of what he knows. I know what he's learned now, not just what he learned the first time through, so I could piece together the rest doing my own research from here. Trouble is, I don't have to look far to know about Alpha, Sam. Or Edward St. John V. Which means some of these splinters may fly, cracking other timelines. And you're awfully close to me right now. You, and Al, and Martha. Even Donna, considering."

"Considering what, exactly? And who _is_ Donna?" Sam asked, having heard the Doctor mention her before, though he'd been unwilling to ask at that time.

"Your—" The Doctor cut himself off, looking pained. "No, hasn't happened yet for you. My friend. In about twenty-five years, relative time, my friend Donna is going to save you. You, and everyone else on Earth. Everyone in the universe, really. No matter when you are, Sam, she'll still save you. She'll save everyone. She was brilliant." He closed his eyes.

Sam knew the pain he glimpsed on the Doctor's face was real, and he didn't even bother asking why he thought this would affect his friend. Perhaps she was close to his other self at the Project, like Al was, even if that was unlikely. Still, however true the Doctor's story was, Sam had a feeling that he wasn't exactly telling the truth, at least not in its entirety. But it was the man's right not to share everything with him, and he would respect that.

Besides, if the Doctor was going to get himself leaped back to the Project, he needed to know what was going on beforehand. And what to do if something went wrong. He still wasn't sure what would happen if the Doctor splintered, and he wasn't sure he wanted to help the man do something that would cause that process to accelerate to the breaking point. He wanted to know the facts.

He'd have to ask questions carefully, though, or he might not get any answers. "So if you figured this out yourself, why tell me? Why not just tell Al? He was with you, after all."

"I didn't have time to say anything to him," the Doctor answered, not bothering to open his eyes. "Too busy discussing…other things. And then they were cut off, so I expect that means that the circuitry's finished in that handlink. Even if it wasn't a big explosion, which I don't really expect it was, it would have knocked something out somewhere along the line. Domino effect. Nothing a new handlink wouldn't fix, but it would take a minute or two to get that, and I didn't think Al would be particularly happy to see me by the time they finally got it synced up and ready for use. And I would've been the only one to lock on to, and they know it, seeing as we weren't able to rig anything up to get a signal in the TARDIS, not on such short notice or without all the proper tools and calibrations and whatnot, on top of everything else that kept cropping up." The Doctor sighed, opening weary eyes. "I didn't think Al would be coming back until Ziggy could get a lock on you again."

"Are you sure it's safe?" Sam finally asked. "To leap him into you?"

"Sam," the Doctor began, "I know what I'm doing. Yes. It should be safe."

"Should?" Sam repeated doubtfully.

"There are very few things in this universe that are completely certain and unchangeable," the Doctor reminded him. "So yes, should. But look at it this way, Sam. If we don't do anything, it'll have the same effect. If this goes wrong, which it shouldn't, it would only be speeding up the process that was going to happen anyway."

"But why do you need to go there?"

"Because that's where it started. It all started there. Everything started there." The Doctor offered him a smile, but to Sam, it looked weak. "And you know what they say to do when you're at a loss: go back to the beginning and start again." The smile became a bit stronger, but still looked faint. "And I've done all I can from here, on this end. And there's something I'd like to check there, just to be sure, and to preserve the rest of my timeline, I'd rather not ask my other self to do it, and he'd be the only one to find it because he'd be the only one who would know what he's looking for."

"What if something goes wrong?"

The Doctor's expression became sombre now. "You'll never know it if it does," he finally declared, sounding almost resigned to that fact. "But I'll know what to do, when it comes to it. I've hidden the information in the TARDIS, and if worse comes to worst, the file will be activated. So it'll just be this that's changed, if everything goes according to plan."

"But what about you?"

"I'll be…replaced."

"But—"

"And look at it this way," the Doctor interrupted. "We need to get the other me here, because he's the only one who can do what needs to be done to do the splicing. Only, it'll still be tricky, so you'll have to stay here with Martha, and I'll send him off in my TARDIS." He patted his ship fondly. "She's going to hide away everything he can't know about yet."

"Doctor, you can't—"

"I can." He straightened up, suddenly looking far older than he had before. "I'm extraordinarily clever, Sam, but I can still make mistakes. I like to think I'm wise, but sometimes I need someone to open my eyes for me. Some of the things I have seen—faced down, even—in all my years travelling…. Oh, it would chill you clear to your core. But I've seen wonderful things, things I wouldn't have appreciated quite as much if I had never spent so much time with you humans. I've always been a bit eccentric, but in the beginning, I still thought I was above you." He smiled. "I needed to be brought down a few pegs, and I was. But I didn't like it. It's terribly humiliating, been shown up by a lesser evolved species." The smile became a bit rueful. "Still is humiliating, but it helps me, Sam. Sometimes, I'm trying so hard to avoid something, or to forget something, or to find something, or to make sure something happens in precisely one way, that I miss things. Little things. I'm too focussed on the big picture. And then one of you bumbling little humans comes and reminds me, points something out, or even just says something brilliant…. And it helps, every little bit. And what I want to do now, Sam, is take a risk, because I'm not going to give up. Are you going to deny me that?"

"Of course not," replied Sam immediately, appalled that the Doctor would think he would even try.

"Thank you," the Doctor said. "Really. Thank you." He lifted one hand and studied it for a moment, turning it around slowly and wiggling his fingers. He sucked in a breath. "Would've thought they'd've managed to get the handlink connected. I can't've done _that_ much damage." He paused. "Well, not intentionally."

"Yeah, well," Al said bitterly, causing Sam to jump—although the Doctor's expression didn't even change. He was standing off to one side, glaring at the Doctor, but he moved closer as he continued, "I confined your counterpart to the Waiting Room, so don't expect to be seeing him any time soon."

"But you're still on this parallel," the Doctor pointed out mildly, "so it can't all be bad, can it?"

"The handlink nearly blew up in my hands!" Al shot back. He turned to Sam, saying, "Ziggy doesn't think you came here to help the Doctor, Sam. At least not initially. We don't have any definite information, but Ziggy projects that, if what the loony tune over there is saying is _true_, then the only reason you would have come here was to help his companion, Martha Jones."

"Help her with what?" Sam asked.

"That's just it; we don't know. Usually, we can access files on these people, but in 1983, Martha Jones isn't old enough to be in preschool, and in 1999, she's just applying to med school." He turned back to the Doctor suddenly. "Is she through that yet? Med school?"

"In her relative timeline, no," the Doctor answered.

Al nodded and looked at Sam. "Maybe you're here to help her pass her exams."

"But she is in my relative timeline," the Doctor continued. "Mind, I had to pull a favour with UNIT to speed up the certification process, but she was doing well last time I ran into her."

"Family troubles, then," Al suggested. "She's got family, hasn't she? Everyone has family troubles." Beside him, Sam snorted and muttered something about infidelity.

"Sure she does. But things get a whole lot worse, and then they get better, and she survives," the Doctor answered.

"Yeah, well, Ziggy still gives it a 34.7 percent chance, based on what we do know, and that's probably the best you're going to get, Sam." Al frowned down at the handlink—one of their earlier models, Sam realized. He hadn't seen that one in quite a while. It was their first prototype, most of it clear black plastic and circuitry, more compact than the colourful one Al used these days—and, more importantly, connected differently than the newer one. When Al noticed Sam's interested look, he rolled his eyes and explained, "I had Do—Dr. Beeks go get Tina after the other one blew up." He saw the Doctor's eyes narrow, but Sam seemed to accept it; he hadn't caught Al's slip. Thankfully. "Completely frazzled the circuits and the plastic even melted—I'm lucky I didn't burn my hand. Gooshie managed to hook this one up again, since none of the others worked, but needed Tina to correlate the connections of some other whatchamacallit, and interface something else, but…." Al shook his head. "I've even got Beeks running maintenance checks, trying to isolate what the Doctor did so we can repair it, because he doesn't want to tell us, just fix it himself, and Gooshie and Tina are still trying to work out all the bugs with this."

"I could fix it up, if you like," the Doctor offered.

"Forget it," Al said immediately, dismissing the option with a wave of his hand. "Besides, you're stuck here, from what I gather."

"Not if you leap me into myself," the Doctor pointed out. "Al, let him out of the Waiting Room, and get him into the quantum accelerator. You can target leaps now, and he needs to splice these parallels together, because I can't. And even if Sam's already done what he leaped in here to do, he can't leap out until this is sorted, can he? He hasn't before. Granted, you can't know that for certain, but it's not a risk you want to take, is it?"

"What do you mean that Sam's already done what he leaped in to do?" Al demanded.

"Well, you've talked to Martha, haven't you?" the Doctor asked, raising his eyebrows at Sam.

"Well, yes, but—"

"There, see? And it worked, you know. What you said. She listened to you." The Doctor sucked in a sudden breath, closing his eyes for a few seconds. Opening them, he continued, "But, well, I wasn't _completely_ wrong. About you leaping here, I mean. Just…partially. You weren't supposed to leap into _these_ circumstances. You weren't supposed to leap into me _now_. If you _were_ the turbulence we hit in the Vortex, then we're probably the reason you leaped in early as much as you're the reason Martha and I ended up on this parallel. Granted, my alarm only went off because you _did _land on this parallel since, being the Type LXXVI that it is, you were in danger, continuous enantiomeric pocket or not, since even though it's probably safer than the rest of this parallel at the moment, it's still temporally unstable and is liable to terminate a few minutes before the rest of the parallel. Of course, because I had to leave a sensor at the Project, I couldn't make it sensitive enough to tell me what _kind_ of danger you were in, as I wasn't about to leave highly advanced technology in the end of the twentieth century, and in the end that's what alerted me to this mess in the first place. Though I would have found it later, given that Sam remembers the combined effects of the spliced parallels, with the key mutations merging as they would." He looked back at Al. "But, none of that's going to matter if you don't get me to the Project and the other me from the Waiting Room right here."

Al looked from the Doctor to Sam, the latter looking just as shocked as he himself felt. Grudgingly, he hit a button on the handlink. And frowned. "Even with the Doctor in the Waiting Room, there's only a 12.4 percent chance that Sam should be leaping."

"Exactly. He's not going to get out of here unless we fix this, and we can't fix this unless you leap my counterpart into me, right now."

"Look, Doctor, I don't care _what_ you say. You don't know—"

"I _do_ know," the Doctor snapped. He started to laugh, bitterly. "Oh, you're the one who doesn't know, Al. You don't know how much I _wish _I didn't know, but I do. I do. It's always there, right in the back of my mind, and most of the time I can keep it there; I don't have to look too closely, even if I can't shut it out. But I can't push it away now. It's right in the forefront, right out in front of me, _blinding_ me with everything, so I know. Oh, _believe_ me, I _know_. And it doesn't matter what happens to me, not really, because I'm going to die anyway. Whether or not we splice these parallels together, whether or not we succeed in this little venture, _I'm going to die_."

Sam looked alarmed at the Doctor's sudden change in mood, and Al wasn't exactly feeling comfortable himself, especially since the Doctor seemed oblivious to their looks. Hadn't he said, back before they'd begun discussing the situation at hand too deeply, that it had only been a few months for him, too? Not much longer than it had been for them at the Project? How long had he known? How long had it been eating away at him? Because Al knew the Doctor was telling the truth—it was so clear, on his face and in his voice and in that harsh, dark, haunting laughter, that Al figured there could only be handful of people on the planet who wouldn't be able to see it.

"I'll go tell everyone what's going on," Al informed Sam quietly, punching the right key on the handlink. "You just…take care of him."

Sam nodded, casting the Doctor another worried glance, and by the time he looked away, Al had gone.

* * *

A/N: So, yes. The splintering is catching up with the Doctor, and it's a bit further along than it was before, isn't it? Moves quickly, that. So now it's hard for him to think straight, what with everything he's seeing. Or at least to hide everything, or ignore things, or pretend otherwise. That, and I'm cruel.

Also, I had to fudge the dates a bit. Couldn't figure a good way around that. Any suggestions?

And as for the conversation between Martha and Sam, you can take what you like out of it. To really fit it into Doctor Who canon, I'll suggest it as a reason for Martha being married to Mickey, which I suppose is something I ought to have seen coming but didn't. Because otherwise, if no real explanation was given, then with this skewed storyline of mine, it actually fits. The splintering Doctor, as far as we know, last heard of Martha and Tom Milligan. Crack the timeline apart, insert Sam, and things take a different direction, with the Doctor not looking at all surprised to see Martha and Mickey together when he tracks them down and saves them. And, really, the non-splintering Doctor wouldn't be surprised to see them together, would he, when he sees them right at the end, not if he knows what Sam changed.


	12. Chapter 12

"Gooshie, activate the accelerator chamber," Al called as he stormed out of the Imaging Chamber and into the Control Room. "Ziggy, let the Doctor out of the Waiting Room, and Donna, get him set and into the quantum accelerator chamber. Tina, we're leaping the Doctor into himself. You've got the coordinates from Ziggy's last lock. Verbeena," he added, spotting her step up to help, "you'll want to get down to the Waiting Room. When I left, the Doctor was fit for the loony bin, and Sam looked like he agreed with me on that."

There was a flurry of activity around him, but for a moment, Al just stopped. He didn't really believe in God, not after what had happened with…. But some things Sam had encountered during his leaps—like Angela, whom he had scoffed at the entire time regarding her claims of being an angel, until she had left and Sam, along with everyone else in 1958, had forgotten all about her—had him questioning again. He'd found himself praying before, when circumstances were dire. And, well, now was as good a time as any.

"Synchrotron online," Gooshie called, interrupting Al's thoughts—and wishes and pleas and bargains, if he was perfectly honest. He vaguely wondered how long he'd been lost in his thoughts; he hadn't even realized Donna had re-entered the Control Room, let alone that she was now standing in place beside Gooshie, ready to leap the Doctor on Gooshie's command.

"Affirmative," came Donna's reply. The catch in her voice reminded the others of the last time they'd stood here, in the same positions, repeating the same lines. The last time, when they'd sent Dr. Beckett back in time, leaping him into Al—something they couldn't have done if Donna hadn't let him go, because Sam wouldn't have been able to break her heart again. But with less than thirty seconds, he would have been hard pressed to find another way to save Al.

"Stand by to fire," Gooshie continued. He caught Tina's gaze, and she nodded; everything was in order. "Fire!"

"Ziggy?" Al asked after a moment.

"The leap was successful, Admiral." There was a slight pause, and Ziggy added, "But Dr. Beckett will be unable to leap out if the Doctor's state deteriorates any further. The resulting complications that would occur during the attempted leap would be lethal to the leapers."

"Then the Doctor had damn well better know what he's doing," Al growled. "If we lose Sam because of him—"

"Ziggy," Donna called out suddenly, "what are the chances that Sam won't—?" She stopped, unable to finish her query, too afraid of the answer to ask the question at that moment. "Keep monitoring those temporal fluctuations you've been tracking, and alert me to any changes."

"Of course, Dr. Eleese."

"Gooshie, how's the record coming?" Al asked, trying to break the uncomfortable silence after Donna's request. "Are we going to have a copy of the leap this time?"

"I believe so, Admiral," Gooshie answered. "Providing Dr. Smith remains unaware. Given his actions last time…."

"Yeah, he'd somehow manage to ruin them, I'm sure." Al frowned. "Donna—"

"I'm staying here, Admiral," Donna interrupted. "I'll help Gooshie."

Al's frown deepened slightly, but he didn't argue. He took a breath, calculating how long he figured it would be before Beeks tracked him down with her report on the Doctor, and turned to Tina. "Join me?" he asked, jerking his head in the direction of his office. He opened his mouth to continue, but Tina gave him a broad grin, and he swallowed his words. Why waste his breath talking, after all?

"Oh, Al," she said, her earrings winking brightly, matching her smile. "I thought you'd never ask!"

* * *

"Oooh," the Doctor groaned, holding his head. Sam looked at him with renewed concern, but the Doctor suddenly straightened up. "_How_ you stand that, leap after leap, is beyond me. Granted, you tend to stay on the same timeline, and that's bad enough, but jumping parallels? Grates the nerves, it does." He gave his head a shake. "Right, then. Things to do."

"You can help me to sort this out?" Sam asked, trying to get used to the fact that he was talking to his leapee, face to face—and that they were in the same temporal plane.

"Well, technically, from what I understand, you did your part," the Doctor replied. "And you just can't leap until I've sorted everything else. Namely, the splicing. Right. But you can't come with me."

"But I thought—"

"Sam, you have some experience with time travel, but frankly, it's not nearly enough." The Doctor read the look on Sam's face and sighed. "I'm not willing to take the risk," he explained, "of taking you fully into the Vortex, not when you're split as you are. And before you even _mention_ it," he added, seeing Sam open his mouth in protest, "I'm different. And besides, I'm still me. The same me, from teeth to toe. I've a few neurons that I'd better not acknowledge at the moment, but they will be a part of me, in however many years he is ahead of me."

"Doctor, I—"

"I won't be long," the Doctor interrupted. "Well, not unless I miscalculate. But I'm more concerned about leaving than landing, because by the time I'm through, I'll have knit the parallels together, and it'll be a fair bit easier to find the right piece of time." He looked at Sam for a moment, who didn't have the heart to keep protesting. "I don't know if you'll notice a difference, actually, since things should just change around you. Not if you remember what happened once the splicing was through. Which has me wonder, really. Because…." He trailed off and shook his head. "I'll find out soon enough, I suppose." He grinned at Sam and nodded to the breast pocket. "I might have an old watch in there," he said. "Don't know if it works, but if it does, you can time me." Pulling a key from his own pocket, he unlocked the door to his counterpart's TARDIS and dashed inside.

Sam stepped back as the engines of the TARDIS wheezed to life. He wouldn't deny that he wanted to experience another type of time travel, but witnessing this…. It was astounding. Some part of him—well, not exactly _him_—could name all the laws that were obeyed, and how most of the laws he himself knew were shattered once the higher dimensions were accounted for. And his pure fascination of each and every concept involved as he saw the groaning dematerialization of the Doctor's ship was enough to override his bitter disappoint.

Grinning despite himself, Sam started rummaging in his pocket for a watch.

* * *

Dr. Verbeena Beeks stood just inside the Waiting Room, the seamless, bright blue walls giving the impression of immense space. It helped, they'd learned, with some leapees. And sometimes, it added to the surrealistic sense of the leap—whether that was a good thing or not depended upon the leapee, though she would rather be convincing a disoriented leapee that they had neither died nor been abducted by aliens than try to…. But she had an advantage this time: she'd met the leapee before. That he was currently curled up in so tight a ball that she could barely glimpse Sam Beckett's face was the more pressing disadvantage.

Verbeena walked cautiously up the ramp. The balled figure did not stir, though she didn't doubt that he knew of her approach. "Dr. Smith?" she asked gently.

No response. Not even a twitch.

"Dr. Smith, do you remember what happened?"

Nothing.

Verbeena considered her options. Usually, identifying the leapees and the year of their present was their priority. If the leapee was unusually distraught, they could take the time they needed to establish a feeling of calm, after which they could begin plying for the information they needed. This time, however, things were different. She guessed that Al thought Dr. Smith would be able to help them, regardless of how annoyed he was with the man's counterpart. But looking at the still figure now, she had to wonder if perhaps they were too late.

Al exaggerated, yes. He joked. He drank, and he smoked. They were ways for him to deal with the fact that no matter how much danger he saw his friend being forced to face, all he could do was provide some information, either from what Ziggy had turned up or his own experience. On good days. On other days, all he could do was watch. But sometimes, just for a minute, he'd slip back, and—

Verbeena carefully placed a hand on the leapee's shoulder. "Dr. Smith?" she called again, still keeping her voice low and soothing.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, "Don't touch me." The voice was muffled, but the command was clear. That, however, did not startle Verbeena as much as the pain in the voice. She withdrew her hand.

"I'm sorry," she said, her apology genuine, though she wasn't sure she hid her confusion quite as well as she would have liked.

"I don't want you to cut yourself," Sam's voice continued, each word still sounding forced.

"I beg your pardon?"

The figure began to uncurl with agonizing slowness. Verbeena could see the pain on Sam's face, hear the steady, controlled breaths—far too shallow and quick to be normal, from what she recalled earlier. He pulled himself into a sitting position, eyes screwed up tightly, face white. "I don't want you to cut yourself," he repeated, enunciating every word with painful precision. "And you might, if you get too close."

"I'll just—"

"No." A careful, deeper breath, slowly exhaled. Dr. Smith opened his eyes. "You don't understand. The slivers are there, and you can't see them, so you could cut yourself."

"Dr. Smith, let me help."

A pained smile appeared on the face. "Oh, Dr. Verbeena Beeks, if you could help, I wouldn't stop you. But you can't." The eyes closed again.

"We have medical facilities—"

"Oh, you know that won't help," Dr. Smith interrupted. "Nothing will."

"If we could just—"

"Sam's physical aura is masking me," Dr. Smith cut in, reopening his eyes. "And believe me, what's underneath _isn't_ pretty. But you can't do anything about it. The damage was incurred in the leaping process."

"Ziggy didn't pick up anything unusual."

"She wouldn't have, not after the inhibitor I put in. And even I thought I'd be in better shape than this," Dr. Smith admitted. He took a few steadying breaths before continuing, "More stable, I mean. Wouldn't've suggested it otherwise. I mean, there always was Martha. But I thought from here, I could…." He trailed off, instead pursuing his original thought. "Besides, I didn't want to skew the timeline any—" He inhaled sharply. After a few seconds, he added, "Any more than necessary."

"But if there's anything—"

"There wasn't, and there still isn't. I'm the Doctor, Verbeena Beeks, and I know time in a way you never will. Because you can't. Most of what you believe is, under normal circumstances, complete and utter nonsense. I mean, step on a butterfly and change the world?" His tone was scoffing, and he started to laugh, but quickly reconsidered this.

"I'll get you a glass of water," Verbeena told him, starting to move off, but she saw him give a slight shake of his head, so she stopped.

"Hear me out." A few more laboured breaths, then, "The idea of one small move in time creating catastrophic effects downstream—yes, it's possible, but it's _exceedingly_ rare. Currents are regulated. Modified. Moderated. You can pick most any major event in your history, and likely as not I'd be able to tell you five, ten little things that led up to it, not just one. It's all a matter of—" He'd been speaking more quickly, but he suddenly broke off. He smiled weakly at her. "Well, perhaps that isn't such a bad idea, the water."

Verbeena nodded and went to get it. She wasn't entirely sure what to make of the situation, and she didn't particularly like that feeling. She'd managed to get a partial story about Dr. Smith's last appearance at the Project out of Tina, and a few other bits from Donna, but Al kept avoiding her, and Gooshie had been too busy to approach. For the most part, she was still flying blind—even out of what she had been told, she wasn't sure how much she could believe.

Except that Dr. Smith was also a time traveller. That fact seemed indisputable, given the circumstances.

Her thoughts weren't much clearer by the time she reached the Waiting Room, namely because she'd tried consulting Ziggy but had been told that "any data pertaining to the Doctor has been corrupted" and that was that. Frankly, remembering what Dr. Smith had said about an inhibitor, and what Tina had been ranting about earlier…. Frankly, she had to wonder exactly how…_safe_ they were. The Doctor and Dr. Smith had both been talking about time being damaged, and what with where Sam had ended up, she had to be thankful they couldn't track down any worse effects. The Project's security was threatened, yes, but they could deal with that accordingly, she knew. Her immediate concerns lay with Dr. Smith. Time traveller or not, she needed to hear him out to begin to understand his mental state. The effect of time on Sam, and any of their other leapees, had been partial amnesia. The effect on Dr. Smith appeared to be different.

He hadn't moved, as far as she could tell. His eyes were closed again, but he was utterly still, and for a moment, she wasn't sure that he was breathing. She put the water down beside him.

"Thank you," he said, picking it up and taking a few tentative sips. He still hadn't opened his eyes.

"Do you feel well enough to continue?"

A crooked smile appeared on Sam's face, and he opened his eyes. "I feel like I've fallen a couple hundred feet off a radio telescope. My body feels broken. But I'll still continue, yes. Did last time, at any rate." He looked at the water for a moment, took a swig, and choked. "Bit too enthusiastic, I think," he explained, coughing. When the fit subsided, he sat very still. After a few moments, he asked, "Where was I?"

"You were saying you could name a number of small things that led up to a notable historic event," Verbeena supplied.

"Right. Yes." Dr. Smith took a careful breath. "Generally, when someone says that this one thing caused that one event, all they are showing you is the last straw. The one that broke the camel's back. There could be an entire haystack involved, but they're blaming that one straw. You lot, you love blaming that single straw, that final event, but really, your vision's just blinkered. You don't see any more because you don't _want_ to see any more. Usually." He looked up at her, as if expecting her to protest. When she didn't, he continued, "But _you_, here, what you send Sam out to do—that's different. You don't want him to burst the dam; you want him to divert the river."

A contradiction of sorts, Verbeena noted, but she saw his point. "And you disapprove?" she guessed.

"Well. Sort of. Not exactly. The _intention_ is true. The _means_ is suitable, given your circumstances. But you can't control the effects, and that's what worries me."

"Ziggy—"

"Is a wonderful invention, yes," Dr. Smith interrupted, "but she's limited by the same limitations as those who invented her." He paused. "Last time I was here, I made a mistake. And that's not something I often say. But I'm correcting it, Verbeena. Right now. The parallels are being spliced. I can _feel _it. The strands are converging, and even though my mistake will still stand, it won't matter any more. Not in the long run." He stopped.

"Are you saying that Sam is making mistakes that will have to be corrected?" Verbeena asked, careful to keep her voice neutral.

Dr. Smith shook his head, just slightly, just once. "No. I'm saying that he's doing the correcting."

"Then where do you find fault in his work? Because it wasn't his original intention?"

"I think the evolution of the experiment is a wondrous thing," Dr. Smith told her, and for a moment, the sincerity in his voice eclipsed his pain. "I just…. It's not planned. Sam is very, very lucky, Verbeena Beeks. That he's leaping about in time is absolutely brilliant, but there are things out there—things that he doesn't know about, things that you don't know about. And even if I can keep him away from fixed points, I can't…. I can't guarantee that he…. It's dangerous. I know that from experience." He held up a hand in front of him, studying it. "So many effects," he said. "If Sam was the only one out there, he'd be safer. But he's not."

"So there are others like you and Alia?"

Dr. Smith opened his mouth, but he still took a while in answering. "Ah, well, no," he finally responded. "Not like Alia, not anymore. And certainly not like me. Just…." He stopped again, and Verbeena couldn't tell whether it was due to a lack of words or the amount of pain he was surely experiencing. He waited a few minutes before he continued, saying, "With me, the reason I'm in this mess…. I can't change my timeline. Once I've done something, I've done it. That's that. Simple. Trying to avoid that makes things complicated. Sometimes, I can get out of it unscathed. Usually takes a _tremendous_ amount of power, though. And once it's happened, well, it's already happened one or two or four or however many more times before, so it was bound to happen again. I try not to cross my own timeline, a few cheap tricks aside, where it really doesn't matter because I'm careful enough. So if I do cross it, I try not to change it." He hesitated. "The last time I crossed my own timeline where I was in the same regeneration and something changed, my other self, he…. He didn't _splinter_, exactly, when the timeline was changed, because the circumstances weren't ones that would _lead_ to splintering. That's why it's rare. And probably the only reason I've managed to avoid it until now. Because it all comes down to the circumstances of the change. Last time, the effects were instantaneous."

"What happened, if I may ask? Last time?"

"Oh, I nearly died last time," Dr. Smith answered hollowly. "It took a very smart, and a very brave, man to save me. And everyone else. Technically, on that parallel, I had died. But then one ordinary man made a sacrifice, and the timeline reasserted itself, correcting all the damage that had been done to time that day. November 7, 1987." Dr. Smith paused, and finally added, "One small change, you'd think. One life. But it mattered. Oh, how it mattered."

"Sam's saved lives," Verbeena pointed out. "Many times."

"Yes," Dr, Smith agreed, "and I've made sure he doesn't face those monsters that try to correct that. Well, correct that as they see fit. We don't see eye to eye, them and me. Not usually." He took a careful breath and added, "I'm glad it's limited. Sam's travel. He's much safer when it's limited."

"Limited?"

"Within his own lifetime."

"But you can't—"

"It's limited," Dr. Smith repeated, a bit more forcefully. "And, because of that, he shouldn't have to deal with anything that I've had to deal with." He paused. "Well, unless something mistakes him for me again, but that's unlikely."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, reason I ran into Sam last time," Dr. Smith said, waving it off. "It's just—" He broke off abruptly, his breath exploding through his teeth. He curled forward, face screwed up tightly in pain. He teetered forward, precariously balanced on the edge of the table, and she caught his shoulders, worried that he'd fall off otherwise.

"Don't touch me!" he yelled, pulling away immediately, knocking the half-empty glass of water off the table and causing it to shatter. She stepped back, shocked at the outburst. He pulled himself up and settled safely in the middle of the table, staring critically at her. "Let me see your hands," he demanded, his voice still strong. He didn't sound angry as much as he sounded worried.

"I'm fine," she informed him, showing him her unscathed palms.

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Good," he said simply. "You weren't cut."

Deciding to humour him, she agreed, "No. Isn't that lucky?"

"Far more than you realize," he told her darkly. "I could have cut your timeline, but it doesn't even look like I nicked it." He continued to stare at her. "No," he finally said. "Don't think I did. You were headed for that anyway."

"Pardon?"

"Safest thing," Dr. Smith began, ignoring her, "is to keep everyone away from me. Far as you can. _Especially_ Al and Donna. Even Sammy Jo. Anyone who's had their timelines changed by Sam is more susceptible to being cut. And I can't guarantee that cutting them won't send them back to wherever they were before Sam interfered." He closed his eyes, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't want to hurt anyone else."

Pursing her lips, Verbeena reluctantly acknowledged that she wasn't going to be getting anything more out of Dr. Smith for a while yet. Carefully sidestepping the broken glass, she set out to find Al.

* * *

A/N: Many among you will, of course, recognize a few lines of dialogue from _The Leap Back_. The events of that episode are also the reason I'm saying that they can, more or less, target a new leap. If not, well, we'll call it another stroke of luck.

As for the Doctor off to the Evil Leaper Project to do something to splice the parallels…. If I wrote that, it would be another story entirely, neatly fitted into this one between this chapter and the next. I'll give it some thought, and if anyone would like me to take a shot at writing it, let me know. As always, many thanks to those who take the time to review.

Update: All right, I've mulled over the idea for a bit, and I'm going to take a shot at writing _Splicing_, so now's the time in the story to read it without knowing how it's going to end.


	13. Chapter 13

Sam was now convinced that the Doctor must have been mistaken about the watch. He'd been through all the pockets, but he hadn't managed to come up with any sort of timepiece. He wasn't waiting long, however, before he heard the chilling sound of the Doctor's TARDIS materializing a few feet away from him, just slightly to the left of where the ship had been parked before.

A minute or so later, the Doctor stuck his head out the door and grinned at Sam. "Well?" he asked. "What's my time?"

"Perhaps ten minutes," Sam offered.

The Doctor frowned. "Really? I was aiming for two. Nice number, two. Prime, even, positive—"

"It was longer than two minutes," Sam interrupted. "But, Doctor, did it work?"

"Well, of course it worked! What do you take me for?" the Doctor asked, indignant. "Do you think I'm going to go off to do something and come back without having done it?" He eyed the handful of objects at Sam's feet. Nothing unusual, even for him—psychic paper, brainy specs, sonic screwdriver, yo-yo, water pistol, clockwork mouse, bag of jelly babies…. "You've been through all my pockets, I see."

"You didn't have a watch," Sam informed him.

"Odd. Maybe it's in the other suit. Or my coat. Or maybe you didn't just dig deep enough. You didn't find my stethoscope, even." The Doctor nodded to the pile. "But put that back, will you?"

"Dig deep enough?" Sam repeated. "I only found a handful of things in there!"

"Perhaps, but you clearly didn't rummage around. You just scooped out whatever was on top. Do you think I'd go around with only that in my pockets?"

"But—"

"Look here, see?" The Doctor pulled a stethoscope out of his own pocket. It was exactly where he thought it would be. "Me, I know what I'm looking for." He tucked it back in place. "They're bigger on the inside, my pockets, just like the TARDIS. Excellent when everyone thinks I'm not carrying anything at all. Especially when people try to search me and do precisely what you did. Though, if I need the time, I will allow things to shift so that they're digging through for quite a while, trying to unearth everything. Not the best option when they're testy, though. They tend not to appreciate it. Seem to think it's my fault, all the work they go through when searching me."

Sam was quiet for a moment. "If the parallels are spliced, and I've done what I came to do, why am I not leaping?"

"I expect," the Doctor replied as Sam pocketed the sonic screwdriver, "it's because things aren't quite finished yet."

"It's because of your other self, isn't it? And the fact that I've caused him to splinter."

"Sam, it's not your fault."

"How can we fix this, then?" Sam asked. "Once the parallels were spliced, he told me, the splintering would stop. So I should be leaping. And because I'm not, something went wrong, which means I'm not going to leap out!"

"Sam," the Doctor began. "Sam, listen to me. I read the report of the time you leaped into Bingo. That time, it was different. I don't know why you didn't leap immediately after Bingo accomplished his task, but I can guess. It was for Al. You knew how much Al needed to see Lisa alive again and free from scorn, didn't you? Oh, some people might say it's just so that you had definite confirmation that it _did_ work, that Bingo _did_ stop Marcie's unintentional murder, but I don't think so." He sighed. "Bit different this time, though, like I said. While we could assume that your leaping out will leap me back into myself and my other self back into his own self, sort of like what would have happened with Bingo, I don't know if I'd want to risk it, frankly. The splicing may have stopped the splintering, but some splinters are exposed now, and they can catch and tear. We'd be better off to reassert the original conditions, landing me back in your Waiting Room." He grinned. "No alarms bells to herald my presence now, though. Found that, and tweaked it. Which I suppose they've noticed, since it won't have gone off when they switched us. Still. It's the safest option—which is a good reason to explain why you haven't leaped yet."

"But what about the other Doctor?" Sam asked, not quite sure if he could be mollified by the Doctor's easy words. "He told me splicing the parallels wouldn't reverse the splintering."

"Well, it can't," the Doctor replied. "The splintering was initiated when you leaped into me, and we can't change that. So the splicing'll just stop it—make sure it doesn't get any worse. Well, not at the same rate, anyway."

"What?" Sam stared at him. "What do you mean, not at the same rate?"

"There's a chance," the Doctor responded slowly, "that, if the splintering has gone too far, the binding effects of the spliced parallels won't last. It's like…." The Doctor fished around for an analogy, recalling conversations he'd had with humans over the years, and finally settled on what he considered a suitable comparison that Sam would understand. "It's like when you get a stone in the windshield of your car," he began. "Before you know it, you've got a condensed network of spider web cracks, all concentrated in one little spot. You don't want it to spread, and sometimes you can stop it, but all it takes is one crack to escape. And sometimes you can't stop that crack, Sam. Sometimes it keeps spreading, splitting off and getting bigger, running from one end clear to the other, and nothing you do can stop it, no matter how hard you try."

"But he said he'd shatter if he travelled in the Time Vortex while he was splintering. If we can't stop it, he'll be stuck where he is!"

"Sam." The Doctor looked solemn. "If his timeline was still cracking, he wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure of the Vortex." A slow grin began to spread across the Doctor's face, belying his previous tone of voice. "But, I've been giving this some thought. And when you leaped into me, you left a bit of yourself behind, and I hope you don't mind, but I had to use it. You humans are brilliant, Sam, and I'm terribly clever, but sometimes I need one of you lot to point out the little, human things that I miss. So…I took advantage of the situation. And…there's a chance that I can mend him. Well, to a point. And _I_ won't even need all the king's horses or all the king's men." He let out a breath through his teeth. "If I play my cards right, I can use some of the energy from my next regeneration to reverberate back and heal the wound in my timeline. I'll still have a nasty bit of scar tissue, but it should put things back to the way they should be."

"Your—? What?"

"Hm? Oh, my regeneration. Not exactly looking forward to it, but I reckon I've got a few years in this body yet, wouldn't you say? Well, unless I do something stupid like trip over a rock." He frowned. "You know probabilities, Sam. What are the odds that, out of eleven chances, my next hair colour will be ginger if I've never been ginger before?" Seeing Sam's expression, he shook his head. "Never mind. Look, when I'm dying, my body will regenerate. I'll change. Completely. All I'll have left of this me are my memories." He looked down at himself. "And a couple more ill-fitting suits. Thing is, that process takes a lot of energy, but it creates a fair bit, too. If I can harness that energy and direct it _back_, then once I've regenerated, I'll have sealed all those cracks in my timeline, and I shouldn't be any the worse for the wear. Theoretically. Might be a bit more, well, explosive regeneration than I've had in the past, though I suppose it would ultimately depend on what triggers it, but…." The Doctor trailed off, tugging his ear absently. "Not too high a price, is it? I'd be able to repair any damage. And who knows? I might want a change then. I do every once in a while. I did after my seventh regeneration _and_ my eighth. Though I expect the latter was because—" He broke off, instead sucking in a quick breath. "But now's not the time to be discussing either my physiological or personality quirks, so let's get to it, shall we?"

"Get to what, exactly?" Sam asked warily. As much as he was tempted to ask more questions of the Doctor, just to learn more about him, he thought he'd better not press his luck. Even if he didn't get another chance to ask questions—and at the rate things had been going, he wouldn't be surprised if he didn't, even if he would be disappointed—he knew better than to press for any additional information now. Time was short, if the other Doctor was still splintering, spliced parallels or not, and the Doctor had other things on his mind.

"Well, I expect you've told Martha a bit of what's going on now, yes? So she'll understand when you go to say goodbye. Have a bit of a chat, if you like. But you can tell her that things are nearly sorted, and it shouldn't be long. I'm going to pop over back to the Project and fix up my counterpart as best I can and then one of us will nip back here to tell you how things went. Give you a change to prepare for your leap, so to speak. Besides, I think he said you'd probably want to talk to him, so we'll give you that chance. And then it's back to business as usual, eh?" He grinned at Sam. "I'm sure I would've promised you that you'd leap, didn't I? And I like to keep my promises."

"You did," Sam admitted.

"There we are, then! Look sharp, Sam. It's not the end of the world. Not anymore." The Doctor flashed another bright grin at Sam before pushing the door to the TARDIS open—he'd never properly closed it, Sam realized—and disappearing inside.

As the ship groaned to life, Sam sighed and headed back to the other TARDIS. He had to wonder if, the last time he'd encountered the Doctor, he'd been more harm than help. He certainly seemed to be that this time.

* * *

"Al have any news?" Martha asked, knowing by the way the figure entered the TARDIS that it was Sam and not the Doctor.

"Apparently, there's a short delay before I can leap," Sam explained, "but it shouldn't be too long."

Martha's look became quizzical. "But I thought there was all that business with the parallels? I mean, I never could track down the right library—I found another one, full to the brim with mysteries, if you'd believe it, but nothing useful."

"Al had been talking to the Doctor at the Project," Sam explained, "and he's worked out a way to sort that. He spliced the parallels together. That wasn't what I leaped in to do."

Martha refrained from asking the obvious question, feeling that Sam would have told her if he could have. "You're good at what you do," she said instead. "Blending in, I mean."

"I've had to think on my feet a lot," Sam pointed out. He leaned against the railing and looked up. "I wish I could just question the Doctor about all this," he told her wistfully. "Even if he didn't tell me everything, it would be fascinating to hear."

Martha snorted. "It'd be hard to tell if he _didn't_ tell you everything. You don't even have to ask him a question before he talks your ear off." She fell silent for a moment. "You look better now. I mean, even last time, you still looked a bit green around the gills, even if it wasn't as bad as before."

Sam stared at her for a moment, swallowing nervously. "Yes, well. Feel better, too."

"Temporal feedback passed, then?" she continued, wondering why he looked so uneasy.

"Ah…yes. Once the splicing was finished."

"But how could the Doctor splice the parallels if he's back in 1999?" Martha asked sceptically. "Like I said before—like _you_ said before—it's not exactly cutting edge technology compared to this."

"Well, the Doctor's brilliant," Sam pointed out, a nervous smile on his face. "I'm sure he figured something out." Martha frowned at him, so Sam continued, "He said he'd been there before, so perhaps he'd left something that he could use."

"Really?" Martha looked surprised. "You'd think he'd mention the fact that humans had discovered time travel before the 21st century."

"Well, as you can tell, it's not without its flaws," Sam reminded her. "I mean, I don't know if I'm ever going to get back home, Martha."

"I know. You told me. Remember?"

Sam had looked like he'd relaxed again before, but now he looked alarmed. He masked that quickly, however, instead saying, "Yes, but…. I just have to hope."

"Don't lose it," Martha said, putting a hand on his arm. "Too many people lose hope, thinking that what they're hoping for is impossible." She grinned at him. "And if there's one thing I learned in all my travels with the Doctor, it's that nothing's impossible, even if he thinks it is."

Sam smiled at her. "I hope the Doctor appreciates you, Martha Jones." He tapped her nose, adding, "Because _you_ must be one in a million."

She laughed, swatting his hand away. "And Sam Beckett isn't, when he travels through time, righting wrongs?" They stood in silence for a moment, leaning back, looking up at the TARDIS's impossible interior, but it was a comfortable silence.

"I'm glad I met you," Martha said. "I mean, travelling with the Doctor—life gets crazy. And this is crazy, too, meeting up with another time traveller, but it's a good kind of crazy, you know?"

"I think I do."

The silence continued for a while, but Martha was again the one to break it. "If you haven't got long, then we should at least make the best of the time we have. Even if you can't take a trip _in_ the TARDIS, I can at least show you around part of it. You won't _believe_ the wardrobe room. It makes the kitchen look like a cupboard!"

"Wouldn't it be called a galley?" Sam asked, looking at her. "This is a ship, after all."

Martha smiled sheepishly. "Maybe. I've never asked. But the Doctor hasn't corrected me so far, so either he's used to it, or it doesn't matter, or something. But, come on. I may not be the best tour guide, but I can try to answer your questions."

Sam grinned at her. "Brilliant." He patted a coral support. "What's this made out of?"

Martha's smile faded. "Um…scratch that. I don't know." She thought for a moment, and finally replied, "Actually, I'm not sure if the TARDIS _was_ made. Not like manufactured," she explained. "I mean, I wasn't kidding before, when I was talking about shifting rooms. The Doctor's always going on about her being sentient…." She trailed off, realizing what she'd said. "And calling it a 'she'. Sorry. Guess I'm picking up on that habit."

"Ships often are called 'she'," Sam pointed out. "But what else were you going to say?"

"Honestly? I think that one time, when the Doctor was babbling on…." Martha stopped, thinking what she was about to say was absolutely absurd. But then, she'd mentioned something like it before, or at least implied it, back before she'd known that Sam was Sam and not the Doctor. "I think he said she was grown."

Sam reached out to touch the strut again. He closed his eyes and listened to the living ship. "You know, you might be right," he said, grinning at her. "Oh, that's brilliant, isn't it?" The grin became wider. "Martha Jones, you may not think you're going to be an ideal tour guide, but I think you're the perfect one to show me the sights."

"We can swap stories," Martha offered. "I'll tell you about travelling with the Doctor, and you can tell me what you remember about your leaps, since I won't be able to tell you much about the TARDIS herself."

The look on Sam's face told her the idea appealed to him; the grin looked exactly like one the Doctor often gave her. "I may not have been much help on this leap," he said—more to himself than her, she realized— "but I think this will make it worth it. I just hope I'll remember this after I leap."

Martha, who found herself hoping much the same, if only so she might one day have someone to talk to after she'd stopped travelling with the Doctor, whenever that day came, took Sam's hand and led him into the depths of the TARDIS, telling herself that he'd make it home, some day. He had to. Didn't he?

* * *

A/N: Again, many thanks to those who review.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: Many thanks to those who take the time to review.

* * *

The Doctor, remembering the minor difficulty his future self had experienced with landing the TARDIS in the broom closet, was pleased when he found himself in a store room. But when he stepped outside, pulling the door to the TARDIS tightly shut behind him, he could feel something sharp grating on his senses.

He was too late.

"No," he stated firmly. He pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and aimed it at the door, activating it. Precisely eight seconds later, he bounded out into the corridor—

—and found himself at gunpoint. He sighed and held up his hands, anticipating the command, glad that he'd pocketed the sonic screwdriver already. "This really isn't what it looks like," he said.

The man—Corporal McLaughlin, according to his tag—eyed him warily, but did not lower the gun. "Who are you? How did you get in here? What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Name, rank, serial number…. The Doctor grinned. "I'm Doctor John Smith," he explained. "Sorry, got a little turned around down here, found myself in a store room of all places. I believe Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci is expecting me." Name-dropping usually worked, providing you used the right one, in the right context, and said it to the right person. Actually a bit iffy, that, if he thought about it a bit more, but he could talk his way out of most anything in this regeneration.

"What is your business here?" Corporal McLaughlin asked, still not lowering the gun.

Picky, the Doctor thought. He should have just charged on like he owned the place. He wouldn't be wasting so much time. "I'm here to examine your current leapee," he explained slowly. "Dr. Verbeena Beeks decided she needed a second opinion, so I was called in."

"We were never alerted that they cleared anybody," the corporal informed him suspiciously.

"Well, mistakes are made, and do you mind pointing that somewhere else?" the Doctor asked, nodding to the gun. "My arms are getting tired."

"If you were expected, why were you not escorted down to level ten?" The gun did not waver.

"I don't know, maybe because they were busy? I believe I heard mention of some alarms going off earlier." The Doctor began to cautiously lower his arms, but reconsidered when he heard the gun cocking. Being shot would complicate things. Tremendously. Either from the medical side, where they tried operating to get the bullet out, or the physiological side, where he ended up dying and regenerating, which would render the entire visit completely pointless. "Escort me if you like. Radio ahead, even. But I don't think remaining here in a standoff will do either of us much good."

Fortunately the corporal saw the logic in this, and when he was informed that those employed on level ten were aware of a Dr. Smith, he even seemed apologetic. More importantly, he put his gun away, which was just as well, because the Doctor would have taken it out of his hand and thrown it down the hallway if he'd had to stare at it for one more minute. Not a technique he recommended, but despite having spliced the parallels, time _was _still of the essence, as they say, and he wasn't in the mood for games.

And there was the worrying possibility that he was already too late, that the process had advanced to such a stage that he couldn't mend it, despite what he'd said to Sam.

The elevator doors opened, and the Doctor bounded into a familiar hallway. He was right by the Waiting Room. Excellent. Ignoring his guard, he started towards it. He needed to see precisely how bad the damage was. He couldn't—

"Doctor, may I have a word?"

He stopped. "Dr. Beeks," he acknowledged politely, seeing the corporal eying him in the background.

"We'll be fine, Corporal McLaughlin, thank you," Verbeena Beeks said cordially to the Doctor's shadow. She was, evidently, a well-respected civilian, judging by the corporal's crisp nod. She led the Doctor away from the Waiting Room and another corporal who was standing guard nearby, ignoring his protests—a technique he had applied too many times himself to be _too_ spiteful of—and graciously keeping a small sense of conversation going until she had him cornered in her office.

"I need to see him," the Doctor said immediately. "Why did you stop me?"

"Dr. Smith is not well," Verbeena replied simply. She was, he noted, still differentiating them by calling him the Doctor and his future self Dr. Smith. He supposed it was due to the natural human tendency to compartmentalize and classify and sort to establish some sense of order.

"I know that. That's why I'm here. And the longer we wait, the worse he's going to get." The Doctor was trying _very_ hard not to be rude, but he was going to shelf that attempt very quickly if it proved ineffective.

"I wanted to ask you what effect leaping had on you."

"It gives me a bit of a headache, but give me a few seconds, and I recover," the Doctor answered quickly. "Now, really, I've got to—"

"Dr. Smith's pain—"

"Is because he is splintering, Verbeena. I explained it before. You were there. You heard. I wasn't kidding. Listen to me. The wounds aren't physical, not yet. But—"

"He refused to let me touch him," Verbeena cut in sharply. "You must realize the severity of this situation, Doctor. Your counterpart is not well. He refuses to see anyone, a request with which I simply must comply because my initial assessment agrees with the conclusion that his condition is—"

"Dr. Beeks," the Doctor interrupted, "did he say _why_ you shouldn't touch him?"

"He believed that I would cut myself."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you think I've cracked, and I'm going on like Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play, seeing things that aren't there?" He saw the shock on Verbeena's face and his anger subsided. He shouldn't have lost his temper. It was just…the mental grating was _painful_. But that was no excuse. Verbeena was concerned. She was trying to help. She was trying to understand. She was doing what she considered appropriate—alerting him to the situation. Letting him know just how far things had gone, how much it had deteriorated.

She couldn't know that he already knew that. That he could feel it, every shard that was out of place. She couldn't know that, in trying to help, she was just slowing him down.

She deserved an explanation. And an apology. "I'm sorry," the Doctor said sincerely. "But, hear me out. Please. When he said that you might cut yourself, he didn't mean so that you would physically bleed. He meant that you might damage your timeline. Did he say anything about that? About timelines?" Verbeena gave a slight nod. "But it didn't make any sense," the Doctor reasoned, "so you chose to ignore it. Perfect." He frowned, mentally stopping himself from ranting on about the fallacies of the human race to someone who did not deserve to bear the brunt of his anger. Actually, it was a bit worrisome that he _was_ so sensitive—and to his horror, he realized that he was no longer separating the few neurons his future self had left behind from his own. Hastily extracting them from his thought processes, and refraining from thinking about what, precisely, he would face in the future to make him so…like _that_, he continued, "You can't know the damage that would be done if you—or anyone else—cut yourself on that. You don't know where your timeline would end up. Or even how long it would _run_, depending on where it was sliced, and if the cut was complete. If he shatters, and some of those splinters fly, there's no telling how many timelines he'll wound. Anyone who is close to him—and, unfortunately, at the shattering point, _me_, because I've got a bit of him in here with me—when he shatters, _if_ he shatters, is susceptible."

Verbeena's concern had increased tenfold now, and although she kept her expression carefully schooled, the Doctor thought that he saw a bit of horrified curiosity join it. But then he'd had more than a couple of centuries practice; he ought to be good at reading people now. "When you say _shatter_," she began hesitantly, "do you really mean—?"

"Unfortunately, yes. But not physically, not at the end. When he shatters, he'll be replaced. By…whoever the future me is then."

Verbeena was quiet for a moment. "Do you mean to help him?"

"I'd like to, yes. If I may?" the Doctor pointed to the door.

"Forgive me for keeping you. I didn't…I didn't know."

"You couldn't." The Doctor gave her a soft smile. "Thank you. For being concerned. For trying to help. You're brilliant, Dr. Verbeena Beeks. You, and everyone else I've met at Project Quantum Leap." Without waiting another second, the Doctor headed towards the Waiting Room.

* * *

The Doctor sat very still, trying to keep all the pieces together. He'd pushed the ones that had shifted in his mad scramble towards the centre of the table back into place. Keeping them there took more concentration than he wanted to admit. He was lucky, frankly, that the shards hadn't sliced through the illusion. He had no desire to have anyone see him in this state.

He heard the door to the Waiting Room open, but didn't bother opening his eyes. He knew who it was. "Too late," he whispered when he heard the footsteps stop.

"It still might work."

"I don't think so."

"Let me have a look at you."

The Doctor didn't bother protesting, hearing his other self already fiddling with the settings on the sonic screwdriver. The device whined, and a few seconds later he felt Sam's physical aura melt away. He felt bare, exposed.

"Oh." The voice was very small.

"Would they be able to see it yet?" the Doctor asked, still keeping his eyes closed.

There was a brief silence. Then, "No. Not yet."

"I was never able to check the readings," the Doctor admitted. "Leaving was too risky."

"You weren't as stable as you told me you were. I would have checked myself if I'd known. If I'd _looked_."

"You wouldn't have known what you needed to look for without my saying, and I didn't want to risk telling you. Neither did you. Not at the potential cost."

"The timeline's stable now."

"But I'm not."

There was silence for a few moments. "Tell me," the voice said, stronger now, harsher, scathing, "when did I begin to give up so easily?"

The Doctor opened weary eyes. "I'm not giving up," he replied carefully. "I'm accepting what I cannot change."

"Well, I'm not." A grin spread across the other Doctor's face. "Because I _think_, if I'm _very _clever—as you know I am—I can still help you. Keep you from splintering completely. Seeing as it's not really something I'd want to go through."

"You might want to check the readings, first, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking. Because I thought of that. Briefly. Let me guess; involves temporal reverberation along the intermediate chronon strands?"

The other Doctor frowned at him. "You could at least let me _try_."

"If the potential cost outweighs the benefit, it's not worth it!" the Doctor snapped. "You _know_ that. I'd rather shatter than ruin any more lives."

The other Doctor was quiet for a while, his face grave. "I'm going to lose someone else, aren't I?"

The Doctor didn't answer.

"Oh, no, not just _someone_ else, is it? More than one, then. And you're too afraid to let anyone else near you. Even me."

"I've decided it's not worth the cost."

"Tell me, these brilliant people I'm going to travel with—will I know? Will I know what I'm going to do to them?"

"You never wanted to look," the Doctor answered. He looked himself straight in the eye. "And you still won't. Except for one, when the end comes before the beginning."

"But if you learned the end before the beginning, why not change it?" the other Doctor challenged.

"I…couldn't."

"And do you know why? Because everyone who travels with you has the choice. The chance to refuse. And some do. Like Donna. Brilliant, but terrified of what she saw. Terrified of me then, and rightly so, from the looks of you now. So now you're not even giving them the choice, are you? The chance? But tell me, did any of them ever _regret_ travelling with you, given what happened in the end? Rose didn't. Even at the end, when she _knew_, in that last second, before it closed—she knew it was over, even if she wouldn't give up. But I didn't see any regret in her eyes, not over the choice to travel with me." The Doctor's voice was tight.

"You'll make the same choices I did," the Doctor told him in a heavy voice. "Maybe I'll reconsider once I regenerate." Providing, of course, his death allowed for regeneration. He was still terrified it wouldn't.

"Perhaps you will," the other Doctor agreed. "But right now, I'd rather not let an opportunity to help slip by. There's still a chance we can mend this, you know. Graft a bit over the wounds and let it heal. It's one change."

"And sometimes, in spite of all odds, one small change _does_ matter, doesn't it?" the Doctor rejoined good-naturedly, but his heart wasn't in it, and his voice sounded false. "It is a compound change, after all. Not a simple one."

"I'm not giving up that easily."

"Neither did I, before I was looking with fractured vision," the Doctor retorted bitterly.

"Stop it." The other Doctor's voice was hard, to match his own. "If you carry on like this, you'll make some decisions you'll regret."

"That's the thing. I already have. And I'm not sure if I've done it all yet."

"Nonononono!" The other Doctor moved forward as if to shake him, but stopped abruptly, as if remembering the danger. "Don't go there! Don't you _dare_ go there!"

It was a sign of how far the splintering had progressed, the Doctor knew. He sighed, grimacing as a shard jostled out of place. Perhaps his other self _had _come up with something that he hadn't. Unlikely, but he'd take the chance.

It was the only shot he had, now.

And he really didn't want to die.

And splintering…. Well, it felt like dying. And for all intents and purposes, to this particular self, it was.

"The inhibitor is in section C-43, subsection 4-D, worked into the mainframe of the tertiary peripheral memory drive, cloaked under a perception filter. Go in through the second-last panel on the north side. You can get the readings from there. Just…look at everything carefully."

"Thank you." His other self grinned and started off down the ramp.

"If you don't think…." The Doctor stopped. His counterpart was looking at him expectantly, so he forced himself to continue, saying, "If you don't think it will work, based on what you see…. Just go back. When I shatter, there will be enough force to kick-start the leaping process. You and Sam should still be safe."

Grimly, the other Doctor nodded.

And then he left, heading to the Control Room, leaving the Doctor to wait in the Waiting Room.

He hated waiting.


	15. Chapter 15

Gooshie had nearly completed his task when the Doctor burst into the Control Room and gave him a quick grin. "What are you up to?" he asked, spinning on his heels in a circle, looking around him with interest.

"I…." Gooshie looked down at the papers in front of him. "Admiral Calavicci requested I double-check our filed records with past accounts of Sam's leaps."

"He wanted to try for a paper record on this leap, then, because of the inhibitor my other self put in," the Doctor translated as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and used it to gain access to Ziggy's interior.

Gooshie wisely did not admit that this was true.

"Do you know," the Doctor continued cheerily, "what the chances are that if I don't use the _intermediate _chronon strands to _directly_ send the reverberation back, but rather piggyback it on the peripheral temporal threads in the interior of the dimensional chronon strands, that I'll be able to prove myself wrong?"

"N-no, Dr. Smith."

"Ziggy?"

The parallel-hybrid computer was silent for a moment. "Your query," came the reply at last, "is rhetorical."

"Well, I wouldn't've minded if you'd tried answering," the Doctor said, his voice still slightly muffled. "Ziggy, do you mind redirecting some of these currents? I'm liable to shock myself if you do that again."

"The current processes cannot be interrupted." The computer sounded smug.

"Oh, come on, you know that's not true," the Doctor scolded. "I mean, you'd think you were monitoring for…for…." He trailed off.

"Affirmative, Doctor."

"You're checking the fluctuations! Why didn't I realize it before?" Gooshie heard frantic scrabbling, and sure enough, the Doctor emerged. "Ziggy, let me see your readouts." The Doctor pulled himself up to the nearest screen and began hitting keys, searching for a particular piece of information.

This, of course, horrified Gooshie, who had been told in no uncertain words by Al not to let the Doctor so much as _touch_ Ziggy, at least not without supervision. "Dr. Smith," Gooshie began hesitantly, "I have to ask that you—"

"Ow!" The Doctor jerked his hand back from the control panel. "You shocked me!" He looked accusingly at Ziggy.

"I'd warned you, Doctor."

The Doctor frowned, sucking his injured fingers. "It wasn't me you'd warned, and I expect you know that. Besides, I was just trying to see what you'd found out."

"You should have asked nicely instead of trying to slip past my defences."

"Fine. Consider this me asking you nicely."

"Say please."

"I ought to reprogram you," the Doctor muttered. "Please." There was a delay, as if the computer was—rightly—questioning his sincerity, but in the end Ziggy obediently displayed the data, leaving the Doctor to mutter something about stubborn, egotistical parallel-hybrid computers.

"Dr. Smith, what are you looking for?" Gooshie asked.

The Doctor held up a hand. "Shsh. Just a tic." He continued to examine Ziggy's data. "Ah, _there_ it is," he crowed. "Oh, yes! Right there!" He looked back at Gooshie, pointing at the screen. "See that? That little deviation in the temporal radiation field? That has coordinates. Which means, if the other readings tell me what I think they're going to tell me…." He grinned and disappeared back into the hole he'd created.

For Gooshie, this was entirely too similar to the circumstances of the last conversation he'd had when he'd been alone in the Control Room with the Doctor. In other words, he had no control over it. "Dr. Smith," he began again, "I must insist that you—"

"Yes! Oh, I'm good." There was a few seconds of whining from what Gooshie remembered was the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, alternated with the sure sounds of tampering that made Gooshie wonder if he shouldn't try to drag the Doctor away from the computer. Before he was forced to seriously consider this option, however, the Doctor reappeared, grinning from ear to ear. "See, if I tried it his way, what he was thinking, it wouldn't work, but I'm not; I'm going about a different route, one he didn't even see." His expression sobered for a moment. "Not even when…." The Doctor shook his head. "I mean, still a bit tricky, but not impossible. Not for me."

Gooshie blinked, and he finally realized what the Doctor was talking about. "The splintering?" he guessed.

"Yup. Sorted the parallels already." Seeing Gooshie's surprised face, the Doctor started, "I just nipped back and fixed up a few things, tipped off—" He broke off when Gooshie's confusion grew. "You don't remember—? Oh. _Right_. Sorry. Just…bit scatterbrained. No wonder I had so much trouble trying to dig up any proper information on the parallels from here. You lot only remember what happened once they were spliced together. And now that it's been done, you don't even remember that anything was off, just like when Sam changes history and leaps!" The Doctor scrambled to his feet, fixing the panel he'd removed back into place. Ignoring Gooshie's tentative questions, he barrelled on, "Ziggy, I need you to correlate the—"

"Doctor!" Al was standing just inside the Control Room, and he didn't look pleased. "You've done more than your share of damage already, so would you mind _not_ ordering—?"

"Sorry, Al. Special case," the Doctor interrupted. Turning back to Ziggy, he continued, "Correlate the readings I just programmed in and cross-reference them with the anomaly you found in the temporal radiation field. I'm going to need you to use that analysis to determine the frequency at which the ions in the Waiting Room will need to be resonated. I'd do it myself, but I'm going to be a bit busy."

"Doctor, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Al demanded.

"Fixing something Sam couldn't," the Doctor replied. "But I've been good, haven't I? I didn't even _try_ to destroy your records. Which is saying something, because underneath Ziggy, I could have done everything from shorting out the circuits beneath those poorly placed papers of yours to setting off the sprinklers."

Al rounded on Gooshie now. "You mean to say you let him tamper with Ziggy?"

"Well, Admiral, I—"

"Aw, Al, it's not his fault. Didn't give him much choice. Look at it this way; you can go tell Donna Sam's going to be perfectly safe, just like I promised." He flashed Al a grin. "Ziggy, I'm going to move the TARDIS to the Waiting Room, so disregard the disturbances you pick up. And tell me when you've found that frequency, will you?"

"Of course, Doctor." To Gooshie, the fact that Ziggy was answering the Doctor in the same tone of voice she usually reserved for Admiral Calavicci was worrying. As was the Doctor's nearly-forgotten threat of reprogramming her, because however short a time it took the Doctor to do whatever he did, Gooshie was fairly sure it would take him a good three days to sort it out.

On the upside, things would soon be back to normal.

After all, the Doctor would have no reason to stick around the Project once he'd sorted out this splintering mess.

Unless…unless they could convince him to fix the retrieval system, seeing as the Doctor was using Ziggy, and therefore their resources at the Project, to help him. And one good turn, he had been taught, deserves another. And he believed it.

* * *

The Doctor felt the slight shift that signalled the coming of the TARDIS before he heard it materialize. He opened his eyes, feeling a bit of hope flare up. He didn't have the heart to suppress it. He wanted to hope that his other self was the bearer of good news, not…not the bringer of….

The door on the ship opened, and his other self bounded out, grinning. "I think I can do it," he announced. "Granted, the process might knock me out, and I'll probably come to with a killer headache back in my TARDIS after Sam's leaped out, and I'll have to give up a bit of artron energy and possibly a year or two off my life, not to mention twisting off some chronon strands and potentially damaging a neuron or two, but that's better than the pain and suffering you'd feel if you shattered, so I'd say it's worth the trade."

"What are you trying to _do_?" the Doctor demanded, feeling the energy build in the room. He licked his lips tentatively. "Building up to a particular ionic frequency resonance for—?"

"Magnification," the other Doctor stated simply. He went on to explain his plan, and the Doctor's eyebrows raised and then drew together.

"But that's _impossible_!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You can't—"

"Initial fracture sealing," his counterpart pointed out.

"But that wouldn't—"

"With the reverberation realigning the fracture around the anomaly," his younger self added.

That…made sense. A _lot_ of sense, actually. Why hadn't _he_ thought of— Sam. "You used part of Sam to help you figure that out, didn't you? When he leaped into you, you used what he left behind?"

His counterpart grinned. "Oh yes!" he enthused. "Though," he allowed, "when I saw you, I wasn't sure it would work any more. But then I checked Ziggy. Donna had her monitoring the fluctuations, did you know that? And you turned up. At the point that the first crack appeared. So I could pinpoint you. I mean, looking at the readings caught in your inhibitor, it wouldn't've worked. But those just showed me the boundaries. If that's what's blocked, I needed to take the only path that wasn't. Which I am."

The Doctor smiled at him. "Thank you," he said. "I…I know what you're giving up for this."

"Oh, it's not much, considering," his counterpart waved it off. "All I'm doing is saving my own skin. I mean, I like this body. It'd be nice to keep it in once piece as long as possible." His grin faded slightly. "You know as well as I do that if you splinter once, and survive, you're more likely to splinter again. Because you're never fully stable after that. So I'd rather not run the risk that I don't carry something out exactly as you did. I'd rather make sure you stick around to show as proof that I will. Because even if I don't agree with all the decisions you've made now, I think I'll understand them, and I think I'll make the same ones."

The Doctor uncurled himself and stretched carefully out on the table, trying to remain as straight as possible. The process would, if successful—and he was hoping it _would _be successful, since his other self seemed to have accounted for all the variables—very likely drain him, possibly causing him to lose consciousness, too. Trying to hold together all the pieces was bad enough. The equivalent of having them welded together wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park.

"Ready?" the other Doctor asked, grinning at him. "She's set," he added, nodding to the TARDIS, "and the ion density for the magnification seems to have reached its saturation point, so we don't have any reason to delay."

No, they didn't. And the longer they waited, the less likely it would work. Even seconds counted now, scraping along his mind as they did, grating at him. The Doctor took a slow, careful breath, and grinned at his counterpart. "Allons-y!"

His other self mirrored his grin. "Molto bene!" he exclaimed in turn, activating the control he'd pulled out of his pocket a moment before.

The Waiting Room pulsed with energy for a moment, and then the room went black as the sudden surge frazzled Ziggy's circuits.


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor groaned and opened one eye. Darkness. Hm. Didn't tell him much. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Same teeth. Mole was still there, right in place between his shoulder blades. That had to be a good sign. He hadn't regenerated, at least. And he was still alive. Well, probably. He didn't recall thinking being a part of the short time he'd spent in limbo during his seventh regeneration. Not that he recalled much from that in the first place. So, same body, probably alive, and, judging by his throbbing head, not dreaming. Good signs, then.

Especially since he was still in one piece.

Not _quite_ the original piece, though, as far as he could tell. Because he still remembered everything, both what had originally happened and what had changed. But the cracks were sealed now, the shards fused in place, the splinters smoothed out. He had been healed, more or less, exactly as his other self had predicted.

This was one of those times he _really_ loved being proved wrong.

And one of those times when he realized how much he still had to learn, how much he didn't know, how much of the universe remained a mystery to him.

It was brilliant.

Still, things to sort out. It would be safe for Sam to leap now, but if his other self had read the readings as he should have read the readings, he would also have noticed that he needed to put in a stipulation to delay Sam's leap temporarily and, being as clever as he was, realized that _he_ hadn't actually mentioned that because Ziggy, inhibitor or not, would still be able to hear them and act accordingly; she just couldn't store the information.

But, seeing as the silence told him his counterpart was still out cold, he wouldn't be able to get any confirmation on that. He didn't want to risk specifically delving into his additional knowledge _quite_ yet, seeing as things weren't fully set. Five minutes may do it, though, to let him access it all safely, even if he was better off leaving it as long as possible.

But in the meantime, lights wouldn't be amiss.

The Doctor instinctively reached for his sonic screwdriver, and then he remembered he was still in the Fermi suit. That could be rectified easily enough. Right now, the simplest method was to switch suits with his other self. When it was all said and done, he still wouldn't be back in _his_ suit, but so long as they switched the contents of the pockets back, it wouldn't matter.

Then again, it would probably be easier just to switch back.

He didn't have anything in there he _needed_, did he? That he'd picked up between then and now? Nothing sprang to mind, but that was never any guarantee. He had a terrible tendency to misplace things these days. Not that he ever let it on to anyone else, if he could help it. Donna would be—

No. She couldn't give him a hard time about getting old, because he'd had to leave her behind and make her forget.

Maybe he needed another minute or so to mentally straighten out his timeline; it was still awfully twisted. Kinked, rather. Like a string once the knot that had been weathered into it was finally removed. Whole, but crooked.

Even with the sonic screwdriver, it took a few minutes to get any lighting in the Waiting Room; until he could get to the source of the problem, the odd light or two he'd managed to route through different paths would have to do. No matter how long his other self had spent fiddling with Ziggy, he hadn't found it necessary to memorize the complete schematics of the Project. Come to it, neither had he. Still. Wasn't like he'd plunged the _whole_ Project into darkness—wouldn't've been able to get any light in here if he had. Though he had a feeling Al wouldn't see that as an accomplishment. Perhaps he oughtn't to even try to explain himself. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes…it didn't.

He switched suits with his other self—seeing as his counterpart would be remaining in the Waiting Room, not him, it did make sense—and nipped out to check on the rest of the Project. He did have a bit of trouble with the door, but managed to get it open eventually, and was pleased to see that he'd only managed to take out the power in the lights in the corridor, which was now lit with a back-up system that had survived the de-splintering process. Hmm. De-splintering wasn't quite the right word. But it would have to do; he didn't fancy delivering a ten-minute explanation that wouldn't be understood, even if he did compact it down to two minutes. Well. Normally he wouldn't mind too much, but he didn't have long before Sam leaped out.

And he probably owed a few other explanations to the staff here, and as much as he might like to skip out on them, he really shouldn't. They had, after all, helped. Even if they were partially the cause of the situation in the first place. Though, he didn't blame them, not really. He couldn't. He actually had half a mind to commend them. They were still pioneering human time travel. Not that anything would be perfected for a good deal more than a couple centuries, but they were curious enough, brave enough, ingenious enough, _foolish_ enough, to start. And he admired that. He wasn't a particular fan of one of the things it would eventually lead to—the Time Agency did just as much harm as good, if not more, as far as he was concerned—but this, here and now, was undeniably brilliant.

He checked in the Control Room first. Gooshie was there, with Tina and Donna—looking for all the world like they were trying to repair whatever damage he'd done. Or at least trying to determine its extent. An extent that was, judging by the glower Tina shot in his direction, rather…extensive. Gooshie looked harried, and Donna looked, well, reserved. She was much quieter than Donna Noble had been, who ranted and raged and rallied against the world. Donna Eleese worried. Constantly. And she wanted to be confident, but sometimes, just for a moment, her faith would waver.

He'd seen what could happen when she wavered, when logic forced its way above hope, but in the combat lost its purpose, forcing reason to illogical action. It was the reason she was avoiding his gaze now, studiously turning back to analyze some printouts. Water under the bridge for him, but she still felt guilty.

About as guilty as he'd feel when he had to refuse doing what she would ask. Granted, he should be expecting it. They thought he was his other self. Someone who might, they hoped, be relieved enough to help them.

Even if he was, he couldn't do it.

He walked up to them, glancing at Ziggy's monitors. He turned to read Donna's notes over her shoulder, sidestepping Tina, who was checking circuits, and dodging Gooshie, who was moving from terminal to terminal, frantically typing away. "You know," he said, slowly pulling a pair of glasses from his pocket and settling them on his nose, "if you reroute the power through _that_—" and here he pointed to the appropriate section on the prints in front of Donna "—you can still have Ziggy scanning for Sam while you repair the damage. And you've got the parts in the store room. I remember noticing those." That piece didn't quite fit in place, but it wasn't loose. If anything, it was jammed in, larger now than it had been before. Swollen tightly into place. But…he was better for it, really.

"You're right," Donna murmured, double-checking his calculations in her head. She offered him a small, pained smile. "Thank you."

"Ooh, it's…not much." The Doctor hesitated for a moment, and then added, "And, thank you. For believing in me. For trusting me."

Donna looked at him for a moment before quietly replying, "Thank you for letting me." She held his gaze for a few long seconds, as if she was debating asking him something else, and then she turned away. The Doctor, respectful of her silence, turned his attention elsewhere and squinted at the information Ziggy displayed on the terminal nearest to him. He hit a few keys, checking, and nodded, pulling back and removing his glasses. Stipulation in place; Sam wouldn't leap the moment he left the TARDIS. Didn't buy him much time, but it would buy him enough.

And, well, he didn't have much to do here, not really. He'd been expecting questions. Perhaps he would have gotten them, if he hadn't blown half their delicate circuitry to pieces. They looked like they wanted to ask, but they put it off, he could see, because they knew they didn't have time. Or perhaps they did know that even if they asked, he wouldn't be able to help. No matter how much he wanted to. Something was certainly holding them back, and it wasn't just the necessity of repairing Ziggy or the lighting or the air circulation systems. He saw Tina look up at him, swallow back the words that had been on the tip of her tongue, and return to her work. He saw Gooshie pause in his typing and glance at him before something beeped and drew his attention back to his work. He saw Donna's internal debate as she stared at another page of spewed data, sorting things out and yet not really thinking about that at all.

It was just as well, really. He didn't want to answer their questions. He didn't want to disappoint them, not after everything they'd gone through, not with everything they had yet to come. Cowardly, yes. But he'd rather be a coward.

He hated leaving things in pieces, leaving others to clean up behind him, but sometimes he didn't have a choice. Sometimes—_most_ times—he could do something, but his hands were tied in this situation. He couldn't interfere now. No matter how much he wanted to. He'd be unravelling too much. The events were tangled together. If he fixed the retrieval system like they undoubtedly wanted to request of him, he'd be changing history, not keeping it on its proper path. If Sam were to leap back here and stay, if he brought Sam home now…. The consequences of _him_ doing that, at this time….

Corridor was clear. Good. That was good. Besides, he really didn't _need_ to explain. They'd figure things out themselves quickly enough. And he did somehow doubt that Al would be particularly pleased to see the latest havoc he'd wrecked upon the Project. Not that Al would have any doubt who had done it, or why. So he could _hope_ that he'd be forgiven. But…he'd understand if he wasn't. Fixing things…would take them a while.

"Doctor, if I may have a word?"

The Doctor stopped in his tracks. He offered Verbeena Beeks a sheepish grin when he spotted her. "Actually, if you're still going by your earlier differentiation system, you'd be calling me Dr. Smith. But I do prefer just being called the Doctor." Before she could ask, he added, "I—well, my counterpart—disabled Sam's aura. It'll spring back into place with the next leapee, don't you worry."

"Won't that affect Sam?"

"It shouldn't," the Doctor assured her. "No reason to."

"I spoke with Al about—"

"About the last time I was here," the Doctor guessed, "and now you'd like to get some more answers out of me, I take it."

Verbeena offered him a small smile. "I expect that would be quite difficult."

"Oh, there're one or two people out there who seem to manage it without me even realizing it," the Doctor replied, grinning at her. But when her expression shifted to one that rivalled pity, his grin faded. "What is it?"

"You can't run forever, you know."

"Perhaps not," the Doctor agreed, "but there's a certain thrill in trying, isn't there? Getting out and exploring? Seeing what you can see? Experiencing the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, just to live?"

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?" Verbeena asked wryly. "Perhaps you believe that I can't understand anything about you, but I know that look. And maybe you can hide it from the rest of the world, but you can't hide it from me, because I _know_ that look. I see it every day now. I just need to look at Al, and there it is, clear as day, no matter how he tries to hide it."

"And what look is that?" the Doctor asked, his tone now a good deal more restrained than it had been a moment before.

"You don't want to look behind you," Verbeena pointed out. "You're afraid of what you'll see. Or of what you won't."

The Doctor's mouth quirked into a smile. "Like Orpheus or like Lot's wife?" he asked. They hadn't wanted to look back, not at first, if he was reading his tales correctly. They weren't even supposed to, but they did. The temptation proved too great. And look where it had gotten them. He was better off going on straight ahead. Leaving the past behind. Not looking back.

Bit difficult.

"Like anyone who has done something that they aren't proud of," Verbeena answered simply, "even if it was necessary at the time."

The Doctor wasn't sure how to reply to that. He couldn't exactly _deny _it, not completely. He took a measured breath and looked expectantly at Verbeena, waiting for her to continue.

It was a long moment before she spoke again. "I don't suppose," she began softly, "that there is any way for us to convince you to reconsider your previous decision?"

The Doctor didn't need to ask what she meant; he knew. He'd been expecting it. "No," he told her. "I'm sorry, but I can't, not now. You've seen what can happen."

"Not now or not ever?" Verbeena asked carefully.

The Doctor smiled wistfully at her. "I think you know the answer to that."

Verbeena nodded slightly. "All the best to you in your travels then, Doctor."

"And to you in yours," he replied, his smile gentle. He continued to the Waiting Room, slipping back inside. His other self hadn't regained consciousness, but he wasn't alone. Al was there, waiting for him. "I suppose you'd like an explanation?" the Doctor asked, waving an arm at the dim room, injecting perhaps a bit too much cheerfulness into his voice.

"We'll repair the damage," Al informed him simply. "But, yes, I _would_ like an explanation. I'd like to know why, Doctor. Why put us through this, and still refuse to help?"

"It's not intentional," the Doctor reminded him. "I…this…." He trailed off, looking up at the dark ceiling. "It's just a part, Al, of what you risk every day. Sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes you never find out the reason why. Sometimes, it can be fixed. And sometimes...it can't. It nearly went too far this time. I'd thought it had. But I was lucky. Very, very lucky."

"That sort of luck doesn't last," Al pointed out. "And if you force it to, someone else pays the price."

The Doctor had a feeling that he knew exactly what Al was referring to. They'd learned plenty on that leap of Sam's, even if the lesson was hard. Sam carried the brunt of the guilt, though, related to that price. A price that the Doctor knew all too well himself. "I know. I'm not going to let that happen."

"You don't seem to mind that Sam's pushing his luck."

"It's…not as bad as it seems," the Doctor admitted. "You just don't have all the pieces to see that yet."

"And you do."

"Yes."

"And you won't tell us."

"I can't."

"And that's how it's going to be, every time you turn up? You're going to tell us, each time, that you can't help?"

"I'm sorry."

"I'll bet." Al's voice was bitter, and the Doctor didn't blame him.

"I should go," the Doctor said, motioning to the TARDIS. Al stepped aside, and he fished his key out and unlocked the door.

"Doctor," Al added before he could disappear inside, "listen. You can disappoint us, crush our hopes before they have a chance to be realized, but don't do this to Sam. He's been through enough."

The Doctor nodded once, sharply, and closed the door behind him. It didn't take him long to set the coordinates and start the TARDIS on her way. As the grinding, wheezing song of his ship echoed off the arching walls around him, he clutched the sides of the console, staring down at the controls, hoping he wouldn't have to betray what remained of Al's trust.

* * *

"So this is the corridor to the library, is it?" Sam asked with a laugh as Martha stared back into the console room.

Martha shook her head, laughing herself. "Worst part is," she confided, "I don't know if I got turned around or if things were shifted on me."

Sam's smile faded as he walked past her and up into the console. "I suppose my time's up, then," he surmised, patting the console fondly. Turning back to her, he gave her one of the Doctor's bittersweet grins, saying, "It's been great, really. Absolutely brilliant. I enjoyed being able to spend some time with you. I…generally don't have a lot of time to talk to someone and laugh like this, not without something hanging over my head that I have to do."

"A rest, then. A brief reprieve." Martha smiled at him. "I think I can understand. I need that, too, after some runs with the Doctor."

Sam enveloped her in a great hug. "Thank you, Martha Jones. For listening, and believing, and sharing your own stories."

She hugged him fiercely in return. "I'm going to try to find you," she said. "When I get back. I mean, I don't know if I can, if your Project is still classified and all, but I'm going to try. And then, maybe, we can just talk. Like we did now. I'm sure we'll both have stories. And…I think it'll be good for us. Both of us." She laughed. "I mean, there aren't a lot of people I can talk to about this. Even my family…."

"I know." Sam gave her one final squeeze before releasing her and stepping back. "You'll be brilliant, Martha Jones. In whatever your future holds for you."

"So will you," she managed, smiling at him. He returned it before heading out of the TARDIS for the last time.

The Doctor was waiting for him, leaning against his own ship, watching as he came out. "It worked," he said simply, answering Sam's question before he could voice it. "All the pieces are in place. Well, more or less. But they're not about to move, so I'm no danger to anyone."

"I thought you—well, your other self—had said that he was going to be the one to come back here."

"Plans change." The Doctor offered Sam a half-smile. "And that's a bit of a bother, isn't it, all that extra travelling? Much easier this way."

"Are you—?" Sam stopped for a moment. "Are you both going to be all right?"

The Doctor gave him a small smile. "I'm always all right, Sam."

He wasn't. Sam could see that on his face. He tried to hide it, but it was there. Perhaps it was his practiced eye that could spot it. Or perhaps it was because he had leaped into the Doctor, and part of him was now part of Sam.

He didn't have to remember his last encounter with the Doctor to guess that things couldn't have been much different. Then, he'd probably left Sam with more questions than he'd answered, just like he was now. Because Sam did have questions—millions of them. But he knew he wouldn't get answers for them, even if he didn't know why. Time was likely the largest constraint—an odd concept, seeing as they were both time travellers. But perhaps that in itself was the reason. If this leap had taught him anything, it was that he was lucky. Lucky, and that whoever or whatever was leaping him around wanted to keep him safe as long as possible, because he was doing the right thing.

He'd seen now some of the consequences of what could happen when things went wrong and didn't need to ask to know that it could have been far worse.

But he still had to ask one question. Even if he could shelve all the rest of his curiosities and concerns, he couldn't ignore this one question. It wasn't _who_ or _what_ was leaping him around. It wasn't even _why_. Not when it came down to it. He wanted to know, yes, and he suspected that the Doctor knew, and he'd ask anyone else in a shot, but…. But he had to ask this because now, having seen the fragility of time, he needed to know the answer. He was terrified of the truth, but not knowing was far worse.

So he had to ask.

"Doctor, am I ever going to get back home?"

"I can't tell you that." The Doctor looked genuinely contrite, the sorrow clear on his face, but his tone of voice was one that told Sam that he wasn't going to give in. He wouldn't yield.

Still, it wouldn't stop Sam from trying. "Please."

"I _can't_. I'm sorry, I really am, but I can't."

"I know you know," Sam implored. "Please. Am I going to die on some leap? Am I going to be scattered into atoms? If something happens to Al, or Gooshie, or anyone else, am I going to be left on my own? Am I going to get stuck on a leap somewhere? Are they going to cut the Project's funding and shut us down? Or am I going to get home?"

The Doctor's expression didn't change.

Sam felt cold. He couldn't quell the rising fear he felt, couldn't silence the sickening horror that whispered to him, telling him in teasing words that the Doctor wouldn't tell him because it was all too horrible for Sam to know. And despite himself, he repeated those words, desperate for denial, saying, "I'm going to die, aren't I? And it'll be soon. Maybe even on my next leap. That's why you don't want to tell me."

"You aren't going to die on your next leap, Sam," the Doctor finally divulged, "but no one should know too much about their own future."

"But you know what happens to me."

"Yes."

"If I did get home," Sam theorized, "then I'd have to destroy the Project, wouldn't I? So no one else could control it?"

"If faced with those circumstances," the Doctor replied softly, "you would make the right choice. Like you have before."

"What if I don't?"

"If you didn't, I would have to intervene," the Doctor answered, sounding slightly more cheerful. "But if it comes to it, Sam, you'll make the right choice."

"You really won't tell me, will you?"

"No."

Sam felt like he was fighting a losing battle. "Doctor, you told me yourself that you like to keep your promises. Promise me that I'll be safe. If you can't promise me that I'll make it back home safely and that I won't be abandoned in time, at least promise me that I'll be safe while I am leaping. At least give me that piece of mind. Please."

The Doctor's resolve seemed to crumble. "Sam…." He shook his head. "Dr. Samuel Beckett. You leap through time, putting right what once went wrong, and I applaud you for it. You are brave, and you are strong, and, oh, you are so brilliant. Thank you."

Sam waiting, hoping. But the Doctor didn't continue. "Please, Doctor," he begged. "Please."

"You're going to leap," the Doctor pointed out. "Just like I promised. It's over, and you're leaping."

"Just promise me that I'll be safe," Sam pleaded.

The Doctor sighed. "Sam Beckett, I—"

And Sam leaped.

_Fin_

* * *

A/N: Well, that's all, folks. And while I will admit I was sorely tempted not to have things work out for Doctor, my chosen (though, I'm sure some would protest, still cruel) ending seemed to fit better this way. And Sam? Well, as the Doctor has said, no one should know too much about their own future. Not even poor Sam, who is desperate for some reassurance. Would the Doctor have relented and said something? I expect so. But there was only so much time, and it finally ran out. Sam leaped on, still not knowing, and the Doctor has to continue on, plagued by his knowledge as much as Sam is plagued by its lack.

Was this a tale worth reading? I certainly hope so. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, even if I did occasionally spend hours going over it or staring at a couple of paragraphs, making sure it made sense in my head (for I knew that if I couldn't make sense of it, no one reading it would have a hope). I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out when I started getting my ideas together, especially since it was a bit of a spontaneous sequel and not one I had planned—or even thought about planning—when I wrote _Patchwork_. And while I did make sure that I knew where I was going with this tale, I would like to thank my reviewers again for their much appreciated comments—Questfan, Antioch XX, and czarminotaur. Now that this story is finished, I'd like to know what everyone who read it thought of it, in terms of what I'm doing right and what I need to work on and any other comments anyone might have. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to do that.


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